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The Vanishers

3.08 of 5 stars 3.08 · rating details · 1,396 ratings · 310 reviews

From the acclaimed novelist and The Believer editor HEIDI JULAVITS, a wildly imaginative and emotionally intense novel about mothers, daughters, and the psychic damage women can inflict on one another.

Is the bond between mother and daughter unbreakable, even by death?

Julia Severn is a student at an elite institute for psychics. Her mentor, the legendary Madame Ackermann,...more

Hardcover, 284 pages

Published March 13th 2012 by Doubleday

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Feb 14, 2013 oriana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2013

Well this was just riveting. A lush, pell-mell rush of a book filled with exquisite language that just tugs and tugs you forth. The kind of book you invent excuses to read—just one more cigarette, just twenty more minutes abed before turning off the light, taking the local train instead of the express for more uninterrupted reading time. I almost want to read it again right away, just to fill in all the gaps more clearly.

I admit I am very surprised to have been so captivated and enamored. I rea...more Well this was just riveting. A lush, pell-mell rush of a book filled with exquisite language that just tugs and tugs you forth. The kind of book you invent excuses to read—just one more cigarette, just twenty more minutes abed before turning off the light, taking the local train instead of the express for more uninterrupted reading time. I almost want to read it again right away, just to fill in all the gaps more clearly.

I admit I am very surprised to have been so captivated and enamored. I read The Effects of Living Backwards a year or so ago, and was defeated by its twists and feints and overwrittenness. I found Heidi ultimately too smart for her own good, the book too ambitious, or perhaps myself too casual of a reader to really catch all the subtleties and put all the pieces together.

And yet. Heidi is the editor of The Believer, and I got this book in a proof for $2, and I am largely happy to trust my reading choices to the whims of fate—what I find on the street, what I score for cheap at a used book shop. And so here we are.

The Vanishers is in some ways a scaled-back version of Living Backwards. It is definitely twisty, constantly circling back on itself, and filled with quick reveals that you miss if you're an uncareful reader (which I am). But it's much more manageable, with a smallish cast of sharply memorable characters, and the pacing is more or less perfect—just enough time spent on atmospherics vs dialogue vs philosophizing vs plot.

It's hard to talk more clearly about it without spoilering, but this is a story about psychics (the academic kind, not the cliché kind who read palms on a street corner for five bucks). It's a story about dead mothers and toxic friends and feminism and suicide and ~~porn~~ art films. It takes place in many places: calm rural New England, fast frantic NYC, recovery sanitarium spas in Sweeden. It's about astral projections and psychic wolves, but also about clawed necklaces and sinkholes and paparazzi and betrayals and menacing Barcelona chairs. It's filled with gaspably perfect descriptions tossed off with a casualness that's difficult to believe. It's just absolutely stunning.(less)

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Mar 15, 2012 Cynthia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2012

Suspend your Disbelief

"The Vanishers" has a nice twist on the paranormal craze. Julavits manages to present a fresh outlook as well as a believable plot as long as you're willing to suspend belief and go with the premise. Mid twenties Julia Severn is attending a course in honing her psychic skills in lieu of a more traditional graduate course. She becomes fixated on her mentor, Madam Ackerman, in part because she lost own mother as a baby and still longs for her. Then things blow up at school an...more

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Feb 09, 2013 Caitlin rated it 5 of 5 stars

it's a rare novel that captures the intensity and disorientation of certain deep connections with appropriate strangeness, darkness and humor. i think, perhaps, what julavits articulates here, in part, is the visceral experience of metaphysical moments (i.e., how it feels to intuit, to love, to grieve, to hide from ones emotions, to make oneself metaphysically sick) -- and in doing begins to create a language for emotions or experiences that, to my knowledge, don't yet have names, or at least, e...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Kristin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audio, 2012

My 6 y.o. Daughter picked this audiobook from the library shelves and suggested I listen to it because she liked the flowers on the cover. There are no flowers in this book. I dare say, I have never read a book whose content is so completely opposite the cover. It is a captivating, often horrifying story delving into the darkest places of our souls and psyches - exploring the very meaning of a wounded spirit. I don't think I can say I enjoyed this book. I can't even really explain the plot. But...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Lolly LKH rated it 2 of 5 stars

Confusing and I had to trudge through it. I usually love anything with a paranormal bend to it. It sounded like an amazing read, and it wasn't bad but it just didn't reach a level of pleasure for me that I find in other books of this genre. The storyline was a great idea, no doubt about that but I am still coming out of a brain fog on this one. I can't say I liked it, and yet I can't quite put my finger on the exact reason. It wasn't confusing in the sense it was too clever, too complex, more th...more

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Jan 22, 2013 Brian Feltovich added it

Struggling with this one. Some lovely prose and an inventive idea for a plot, but if I step away for more than ten minutes I can't remember who is doing what and why we care.

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Nov 15, 2011 Grace rated it 3 of 5 stars

Description (source): Julia Severn, a student at a psychics’ training school known as The Workshop, seems to be cursed by one of her professors. Meanwhile, she becomes involved with research on an avant-garde filmmaker of the 1980’s who may have a link to Julia’s deceased mother. The “Vanishers” of the title are those who have disappeared from the lives of their loved ones, either via suicide, or by simply vanishing—although they may choose to leave a video for their families to watch.
Review so...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Maurinejt rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Vanishers begins as an All About Eve story regarding the persecution of a vulnerable psychic young girl with great talent by her powerful medium-mentor who fears her imminent usurpation. However, it quickly morphs into an exploration of suicide, feminism, and the bonds between mothers and daughters. Though that cliche usually implies something healthy and positive, maybe chains might be a better metaphor. The relationships here are the antithesis of positive.

I appreciated the subjects which...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Ricki Treleaven rated it 3 of 5 stars

This week I read The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits . I almost wish I hadn't. {almost} This book has received rave reviews and was recommended to me by several sources. If you decide to read it, please be forewarned that the synopses I read beforehand are misleading. This deception is almost understandable because the plot is very convoluted and unnecessarily complicated.

Basically, the story is about a twenty-something Julia Severn, a student at an exclusive New England institute for psychics. Juli...more This week I read The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits . I almost wish I hadn't. {almost} This book has received rave reviews and was recommended to me by several sources. If you decide to read it, please be forewarned that the synopses I read beforehand are misleading. This deception is almost understandable because the plot is very convoluted and unnecessarily complicated.

Basically, the story is about a twenty-something Julia Severn, a student at an exclusive New England institute for psychics. Julia is one of the most talented in her class, and she is soon chosen to be Madame Ackermann's intern. Ackermann becomes jealous of Julia because Julia completes a complicated regression to solve a mystery for one of Ackermann's clients. Julia is violently attacked psychically, and the assumed attacker is Ackermann.

But what this book is really about is rivalry between women, and believe me it is exhausting to read. There is conflict between basically all of the female characters. With women treating each other so poorly, who needs men to challenge or oppress? Women can destroy each other all on their own without help from men. Oh, joy! Unfortunately, Julia is a very unlikable character, and I really do not care what happens to her because she behaves so badly. Karma is a....female, too, Julia! There is no rest for the wicked in this story, and if you are dead, that is no excuse NOT to cause mayhem. Ghosts as well as psychic vampires mean to harm Julia, too.

There is too much psychobabble in the book. I appreciate T.S. Eliot as well as other modernists, but a novel full of numbed, Prufrock-like zombies is too much for me. I do not want to write a spoiler about what the title means, but I will tell you that it reflects a selfishness that makes me sad. I am tired of entitled, whiny victims who never take responsibility for their own misery.

The prose in The Vanishers is quirky and filled with surprises. I only wish that Julavits could channel her genius in a much kinder, gentler direction. Maybe next time she can at least write a book with one likable female character who is not a destructive force against other women. A simpler plot would be nice, too.
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Feb 22, 2013 Andrew rated it 2 of 5 stars

I was wearing my silver party boots, though I now considered them simply boots. The last party I’d attended I’d been felled by such a gutting attack of vertigo that I’d been forced to spend the night in the stairwell of the hostess’s apartment building, the flights of steps throbbing above me like a stressed vascular system. The last date I’d been on I’d bled from the mouth when kissed. My last visit to a restaurant I’d spent voiding my intestines in the unisex bathroom. Whereas I’d once been ab...more I was wearing my silver party boots, though I now considered them simply boots. The last party I’d attended I’d been felled by such a gutting attack of vertigo that I’d been forced to spend the night in the stairwell of the hostess’s apartment building, the flights of steps throbbing above me like a stressed vascular system. The last date I’d been on I’d bled from the mouth when kissed. My last visit to a restaurant I’d spent voiding my intestines in the unisex bathroom. Whereas I’d once been able to infiltrate other people’s lives and heads while I remained unknown to them, now the opposite was true. Everyone was an impenetrable stranger to me, while I proved a livid advertisement for myself. My symptoms were an ugly secret I couldn’t help but share. Save to go to my job or the occasional doctor appointment or yoga class taught by the soothing adherents of a Canadian named John, I’d become a hermit. If I could not prevent the nausea, the insomnia-provoking pricks of light on the insides of my eyelids, the canker sores, the explosive bowel, the numb extremities, the swollen joints, the eczema-covered hands, I could at least limit the unattractive way that people came to know me when I was anything but alone.

***

Julia Severn is a student at New Hampshire’s prestigious Institute of Integrated Parapsychology—colloquially known as the Workshop. The Workshop is a school for psychics, and Julia was, upon entry, considered one of their more talented recruits. Early in her academic career, Julia is assigned the role of stenographer to her mentor—the much-despised Madame Ackerman, who sees in Julia’s talent a threat to her own standing within the school and the larger psychic community. While documenting Madame Ackerman’s regressions, through which she is able to psychically transpose herself into different times and places, Julia’s gifts are revealed to the jealous matriarch.

Fearful of her protégé’s power, Madame Ackerman inflicts upon Julia a vicious, debilitating psychic attack, which leaves the student a washed-up, self-medicating mess living a pointless New York existence working as an exhibition model for a flooring company. In the months following the attack and her dropping out of the Workshop, Julia is propositioned by a mysteriously aggravating young woman named Alwyn and an academic named Colophon to help track down a missing avant-garde artist, Dominique Varga, who may or may not have known Julia’s mother—who killed herself when Julia was only a month old—for a brief period of time. Along the way, Julia encounters vanishing films—a sort of recorded suicide note, videotaped farewells for those wishing to remove themselves from reality—psychic rehab centres, and unexpected academic success at the hands (and mind) of her toxic self.

There are a great many more details and detours along the way, few of which hold any sense of urgency or self-reflection. The Vanishers succeeds entirely on the strength of Julavits’s sly, sardonic tone—which also, ironically enough, plays a significant part in its undoing. Make no mistake: the language is fork-tongued and often amusing (far too few authors make use of the always-delicious “mendacious”), but what begins as an exciting, altered perspective on the paranormal-made-real becomes, during the book’s third of six parts, decidedly mundane and seemingly disinterested in its own characters.

“The past is not the past if it always present. Memory is an act of murder.”

The Vanishers is in many ways about the many faces of memory—how it is at once illuminating, deceptive, destructive, and manipulative. Psychics, in Julavits world, are (forgive me) the mediums for this exploration. Their abilities are sorely underused as a means for merely dissecting the tricks of memory and how it is so frequently distorted by the frustrations of family. It is also about mothers and daughters, specifically—mothers pushing away their daughters, daughters becoming their mothers; mothers killing themselves, daughters killing their memories of.

It was honestly difficult for me to pull more from this title than what I’ve written above because, interestingly enough for a book about emotional and psychic penetration, I found it to be rather emotionally distant—so much so that I felt distracted by its chilly exterior. No single character felt accessible on any level. The book’s writing, while obviously lovingly crafted, trades depth, momentum, and vulnerability for humour and a plot overburdened, in the end, by detail and quick transitions of location and circumstance.

The Vanishers is a portrait of an intriguing idea painted with simple, clean strokes, when what I really wanted, what I felt this novel sorely needed, was a little mess and imprecision—an emotional core revealed, unhidden behind such delicate craftwork.
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Feb 17, 2013 Rosy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

Julia Severn attends a school for psychics known as the Workshop, where she takes dictation for a powerful professor and reader of past lives, Madame Ackermann. As Julia's talent grows, Madame Ackermann instigates a crippling psychic attack on her, forcing her to leave her studies. After Julia escapes to New York she is recruited to find information about an avant-garde artist, Dominique Varga, in exchange for waging revenge on Madame Ackermann.

The book is at once easy to read and yet confusing...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Jeanne Thornton rated it 4 of 5 stars

Yeah this is great. Basically a Haruki Murakami/David Lynch narrative approach to Sylvia Plath. I was worried about the voice in the book's opening scene -- for a sequence describing a psychic "torquing" competition at a mysterious A-frame house on the periphery of an institute for students of uncommon paranormal ability, basically an X-men scenario if there ever was one, the language was this combo of eerily arch and breezy that I was really not into. And then, as reality starts to shift around...more

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Oct 27, 2012 Lumpenprole rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, borrowed, psychology, mystery, fantasy, horror

In spite of some improbable plot happenings and perhaps some issues with how the timeline of the story held together; a somewhat predictable ending; and few other odds and ends that didn't really seem to fit into the narrative all that well: This book flat-out rocked. The suspense elements worked, the mystery elements worked, the characters worked, and I'll even give a nod to the psychic elements of the story, though we're never told how things had moved it from being considered utterly crackpot...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Ciara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

i really enjoyed this novel, but it is insane. it's hard to even explain what it's about. i guess the protagonist enrolls in an institute where people harness their psychic energy. she quickly becomes a teacher's pet & is enlisted to assist her crazy gypsy lady mentor in the job of psychically identifying the safe in which a movie reel is being stashed. the movie will allegedly prove or disprove allegations about some avant garde performance artist who lured wealthy young socialites into her...more i really enjoyed this novel, but it is insane. it's hard to even explain what it's about. i guess the protagonist enrolls in an institute where people harness their psychic energy. she quickly becomes a teacher's pet & is enlisted to assist her crazy gypsy lady mentor in the job of psychically identifying the safe in which a movie reel is being stashed. the movie will allegedly prove or disprove allegations about some avant garde performance artist who lured wealthy young socialites into her orbit & then manipulated them into starring in snuff films or something. the problem is that the mentor is having a psychic block, & the protagonist's powers are stronger than even she realizes. the mentor has a clue though, & throws some kind of psychic energy at the protag that makes her have some kind of breakdown & drop out of the institute & get a job at a carpet store.

that's where she is when a glamorous young woman comes in & hires her to...do something. i don't even remember. the plot gets so convoluted at this point that i don't remember what the fuck the pretense for everything that follows even is. but soon the protag is jetsetting all over europe, supposedly doing this job, but also trying to avoid the psychic attacks of her mentor & grappling with her unresolved emotions concerning her mother's suicide. everything comes together in a way that is maybe a touch predictable--as predictable as you can really get when you are reading such a patently insane story.

this kind of reminded me of the leftovers by tom perrotta. both books have a similar atmosphere. the vanishers sets a smaller scene, i guess, so there is less disbelief to suspend, & less responsibility for world-building, which i think is where perrotta disappointed me. i also always prefer books with female protagonists, & julavits was smart to focus on just one character when she could have done a third-person omniscient & gotten into the heads of all the different wacky characters that populate this book. focusing on one character kept things more suspenseful & mitigated the confusion to a degree.

this book is DEFINITELY not for everyone, but maybe if you really like aimee bender? (less)

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May 14, 2012 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars

The highly gifted, pretty precocious student Julia Severn is studying at the Institute of Integrated Parapsychology and lands the coveted gig of recording professor Madame Ackermann’s dream-like psychic episodes in Heidi Julavit’s novel “The Vanishers.”

Sounds great, except Madame Ackermann is blocked. Nothing is happening when she is in this state. She is especially not finding out the file number of a film canister she’s been asked to locate. So Julia doodles away the day, finds some answers w...more The highly gifted, pretty precocious student Julia Severn is studying at the Institute of Integrated Parapsychology and lands the coveted gig of recording professor Madame Ackermann’s dream-like psychic episodes in Heidi Julavit’s novel “The Vanishers.”

Sounds great, except Madame Ackermann is blocked. Nothing is happening when she is in this state. She is especially not finding out the file number of a film canister she’s been asked to locate. So Julia doodles away the day, finds some answers without even trying and pretends Madame Ackermann conjured them herself. Also great -- until Madame Ackermann catches on to her little tricks during a routine dinner party game and then all hell breaks loose.

Julia is struck with bloating and skin conditions and all-around discomfort, seemingly the victim of Madame Ackermann’s psychic attack. Julia returns to pedestrians-ville and takes a job as a person who sits in a room pretending to talk on the phone and is hopped up on all sorts of prescriptions that dull her extra sensory perceptions. Then she comes into contact with a handful of people whose interests interlock with her own -- including finding her mother, who killed herself when Julia was a month old.

Along the way Julia learns of people who vanish -- as opposed to killing themselves -- and go on to lead lives away from anyone and anything they know. Many leave behind a last video as a sort of farewell (or, potentially a pornographic eff you). They often spend a bit of time at a spa-like place shared by those recovering from plastic surgery. There is also a hunt for Dominique Vargas, a great filmmaker who disappeared in the mid-1980s, who seems to have ties to Julia’s mother.

This book has that wonderful trait of being something that makes a person sound dizzy and confused when the plot is explained aloud. It’s fun to be reading, but doesn’t stick to the ribs. Every time I set it down I had to backtrack at least six pages when I started again to remember this mess of people and their ticks and motives. Ultimately, this book will be remembered as having a lot of scenes spent in country rehabilitation centers and that at one point things seemed awfully Scooby Doo-ish in a moment of reveal.

The writing is fresh and quirky and descriptive, though sometimes Julavits fishtails into too cute. “Madame Ackermann telescoped her cigarette in an ashtray and stood over me.” That sort of thing. (less)

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May 12, 2012 Lynn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, paranormal

The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits is a literary version of a paranormal novel. Julia Severn is a student at a school for psychics. She has been taken under the tutelage of Madame Ackerman who reminds Julia of her mother. Well, pictures of her mother. Julia's mother died when Julia was a baby. Julia's longing to know her mother underpins the whole story. Her relationship with Madame Ackerman begins to crumble when Madame realizes that her pupil is more talented than her. After a psychic attack, Jul...more

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Apr 04, 2012 Eileen rated it 3 of 5 stars

There's a lot that I really liked and admired about this book, most notably, its originality, imaginative prose and pitch-perfect humor. The first section of the book blew me away—I was so excited to read the rest. And then I did. That's when I felt increasingly stupid for feeling so lost as to what was going on.

I knew enough to understand that the protagonist, Julia, a gifted psychic, was experiencing events that blurred the edges of time and place and real vs. imaginary. I don't mind having t...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Having recently lost my mother, this story, which uses psychic ability as a metaphor for the need we have to process the idea of Death, was very appealing. I also loved the concept that we can be literally toxic to one another--that the act of living itself can be a sort of "psychic attack" on those we love. Sometimes Ms. Julavits reminds me of Nabokov--the names that sound like anagrams, the connections between books, the need for memory to "speak"--and that's one of the highest compliments I c...more

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Mar 22, 2012 Susan Tunis rated it 4 of 5 stars

A convoluted supernatural plot can’t compete with out of this world prose

I’m one of those reviewers who tends to start with a plot summary. So, I could tell you that this is the story of twenty-something Julia Severn, an “Initiate of Promise” at the Institute of Integrated Parapsychology. The novel begins by detailing Julia’s complex and troubled relationship with her mentor, Madame Ackerman. Their problems may stem from the mentor’s fear of being supplanted by the protégé, or perhaps they’re du...more A convoluted supernatural plot can’t compete with out of this world prose

I’m one of those reviewers who tends to start with a plot summary. So, I could tell you that this is the story of twenty-something Julia Severn, an “Initiate of Promise” at the Institute of Integrated Parapsychology. The novel begins by detailing Julia’s complex and troubled relationship with her mentor, Madame Ackerman. Their problems may stem from the mentor’s fear of being supplanted by the protégé, or perhaps they’re due to Ackerman’s resemblance to Julia’s mother who committed suicide when Julia was an infant. For these reasons (and others), things sour, but their separation plagues Julia physically. She leaves school and spends the next year seeking a medical explanation for her physical decline. None is forthcoming until an odd girl literally trips into her life and explains that she’s under “psychic attack.” Offers of both help and employment are proffered.

And that—as they say—is just the beginning. The plot of this novel felt like a game of Three Card Monty, with constantly shifting character identities and allegiances. I didn’t read this novel because the description of the plot interested me. Ghosts, psychics, astral projections? Definitely not my cup of tea. However, a book about mother-daughter relationships and other female rivalries? Now you’re talking! And that’s very much what Heidi Julavits delivered. The whole psychic thing was merely the backdrop against which every type of mother-daughter drama imaginable was displayed.

And all this talk of “drama” sounds dramatic, and some of it was. But a lot of it was very, very funny. And even more of it was weird. And some of it was just plain confusing. I stand by my Three Card Monty analogy. But through it all was Heidi Julavits’ sparkling language. So much of language is merely functional. And, sure basic communication is a good goal. But the sentences of this novel were full of surprises and unexpected turns. They communicated, but they also delighted in a way that is truly rare. This is the sort of novel that leaves me wondering, “Why haven’t I read this author before?” I know there’s another book somewhere on the shelf. I will be digging it up, because Ms. Julavits has charmed me utterly with her inventive use of language. Plot, in this case, was almost immaterial.(less)

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Mar 22, 2012 Michele Weiner rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked her words, not her plot. It was convoluted and incomprehensible at times. The ending was pat and unsatisfying. It's about a young girl who is a psychic. She has lost her mother due to suicide at one month, and her father's behavior tells her that her mother was not a nice person and she was better off growing up without her. The heroine, Julia Severn, is employed at school by an eccentric psychic mentor, whom she outshines in skill. Her mentor resembles her mother somewhat. And she attac...more

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Mar 11, 2012 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: bereavement-fiction, mother-daughter-relationships, grief, suicide, missing-persons, psychics, netgalley, literary

Julavits' novel, The Vanishers, is a complex novel of many themes. It is almost impossible to categorize. Fantasy? Mystery? It does have those elements, but is so much more. The Vanishers is certainly literary fiction at it's best. Julavits' prose is exquisite, but this is not an easy novel to read. Plainly put, this is a very confusing novel that will keep you guessing and turning the pages. On the surface, the plot centers around Julia Severn, a young student enrolled at The Workshop, a univer...more

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Mar 09, 2012 Patty rated it 4 of 5 stars

Quick summary...

Julia is a psychic who has issues and she is being made sick and unstable by another psychic who is jealous of her.

My thoughts...

This was an extremely weird yet oddly fascinating book. Julia was assisting Madame Ackerman when a psychic event caused Madame Ackerman to hate her and make her quite ill. Julia already has issues because of her mothers suicide and it doesn't take much of Madame Ackerman's skills to do her in. She is asked to leave her training. She takes pills round th...more

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Feb 03, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

A good argument for banishing boundaries, this genre-crossing lit fic would sit comfortably on the fantasy shelves. But that is not where "The Believer" editor Heidi Julavits' books are likely to be found.

"The Vanishers" explores the themes of mothers and daughters, forgiveness and revenge through the means of Julia Severn, an exceptionally talented psychic attending a school for psychics. In a situation where psychic powers are taken as a matter of fact, and the psychic institute seems much li...more

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Oct 19, 2011 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: indiespensable

The Vanishers an eccentric, eclectic novel that takes the kinds of themes one usually sees in an Amy Tan* novel, dips them in acid, and rolls them in a crunchy sci-fi topping. Julia is a student at a sort of university for psychics in a world where this seems to be largely taken seriously as a profession. She begins to realize that her favorite professor, a mentoring figure who has hired her to do "stenography," or dictation during her psychic trances, is less psychically capable than she is, an...more The Vanishers an eccentric, eclectic novel that takes the kinds of themes one usually sees in an Amy Tan* novel, dips them in acid, and rolls them in a crunchy sci-fi topping. Julia is a student at a sort of university for psychics in a world where this seems to be largely taken seriously as a profession. She begins to realize that her favorite professor, a mentoring figure who has hired her to do "stenography," or dictation during her psychic trances, is less psychically capable than she is, and when she stumbles across the information her professor is going into these trances to try to find, she passes it off as the professor's own. Eventually, Julia comes to understand, the professor figures out what is going on, drives Julia from the school, and sends her on a quest for health and recovery that takes her around the globe.

Psychic jargon aside, this is a novel about mothers and daughters and what fills the void when one or the other is lost. I didn't necessarily see any universal truths or particular wisdom about these relationships, though, and the plot is sometimes too conveniently resolved without its protagonist doing much for herself. Continually Julia tells us that if she had known better she would not have befriended so-and-so, accepted an offer, met someone somewhere...and while she learns things any reasonable person would rather not know about his or her own mother, or meets someone who lies to her, there never seems to be any real danger of a resolution that is less pleasant than the health problems she endured back home in Manhattan.

Through the book we begin to doubt Julia's perception of the world around her, and whether the people around her are alive and breathing or more "astral imprints," and this keeps things interesting; it's too bad that the main mysteries of the book, namely the reasoning behind the suicides and "vanishings" (which are billed as an oddball entrepreneur's way of allowing would-be suicidal people the alternative of creating a new life for themselves somewhere else, an interesting idea that seems to largely ignore what we know about mental health), go largely unexplored. And by unexplored, I mean such flippant and ridiculous conclusions as her explaining a suicide with, to paraphrase, "anyone would kill themselves if they had a mother like that." Julia's psychic revelations are almost exclusively inadvertent, making her a pretty weak protagonist who doesn't make decisions or take actions on her own very much, and yet things mostly work out. When she's offered a lectureship one wonders what kind of an expert she could possibly be when she can't even control these incidents herself.

In any case, The Vanishers starts out strong, quick-moving, and convincing. Julia's unreliable narration and threatening surroundings give the plot a suspenseful edge, and I have a possibly unique fondness for novels populated largely by unlikeable characters; the controversial artist about whom Julia is attempting to learn is fascinating. Unfortunately, Julia's general lack of initiative and an unsatisfying resolution mar the story.

* The mother-daughter conflicts, I mean; not so much the Asian-American immigrant experience.(less)

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Nov 18, 2012 Shonna Froebel rated it 1 of 5 stars

This was a very odd novel. The main character Julia Severn is a student at a college for psychics. She has been chosen to be a stenographer for one of the professors Madame Ackermann, writing down her psychic experiences. But there develops antigonism between her and the professor when her powers seem to be growing stronger, while the professor's wane. Julia is also still struggling with her mother's suicide which occurred when she was an infant.
When Madame Ackermann seems to have launched a ps...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Anmiryam rated it 4 of 5 stars

Weird, ferocious, passionate, funny and heart wrenching, all these adjectives and more come to mind while reading "The Vanishers." Heidi Julavits's strange novel manages to be a surrealistic psychic noir mystery, a satire of academia and modern medicine, while simultaneously exploring female relationships -- mother to daughter, teacher to student, friend to friend, enemy to enemy -- with an intensity that humor can only mask for so long. As odd as all this sounds, it is also eminently readable.

A...more Weird, ferocious, passionate, funny and heart wrenching, all these adjectives and more come to mind while reading "The Vanishers." Heidi Julavits's strange novel manages to be a surrealistic psychic noir mystery, a satire of academia and modern medicine, while simultaneously exploring female relationships -- mother to daughter, teacher to student, friend to friend, enemy to enemy -- with an intensity that humor can only mask for so long. As odd as all this sounds, it is also eminently readable.

As the book opens, the narrator, Julia Severn is a student of the psychic sciences at the Institute of Paranormal Psychology, also known as The Workshop. Her mentor, the powerful Madame Ackermann, hired Julia to transcribe her regression travels, but has been unable to produce results. While Madame Ackermann sleeps Julia has, without her employer's knowledge, tried to cover for her by making up transcripts of their sessions. Madame Ackermann tumbles to the trick and in retribution launches a psychic attack on Julia that ruins her health and forces her to leave the workshop. After retreating to New York and a mindless job, Julia is approached by a pair of researchers who are seeking a once famous artist and offer Julia treatment in return for using her psychic powers to their advantage. Julia hopes the quest will lead her closer to her mother who committed suicide when she was a month old. As expected, nothing turns out to be what Julia expects.

Who is attacking whom? Who is seeking whom? Where is the border between sanity and insanity? The twists and turns of the plot are complicated by characters who refuse to remain anchored in time and space, life or death and will leave you gasping at the imagination that dreamed up this manic chase. Despite the frenetic forward movement of the story, at its heart, "The Vanishers" is a bildungsroman about dealing with grief and loss, especially when the void is created by suicide or disappearance.

If you get to the end and are left with questions, don't worry, that is Julavits' point. Ambiguity is an essential component of the human condition and learning to live means learning to live with seemingly contradictory impulses governing our relationships.

It is a book worth reading and, in my opinion, rereading.(less)

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May 09, 2012 Rachel Palmieri rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-literature, contemporary, literary-fiction, astral-detective-thriler

In her review, Jennifer Egan called this novel an astral detective thriller, and that's essentially what it is. Julia Severn has fallen ill with a variety of physical symptoms unexplained by any tests or doctors - unexplained until she is informed that she may be under a form of psychic attack by her former mentor at the school where she learned, amongst other things, astral projection and regression. Yes, maybe it all sounds little silly. However, the parapsychology front is a great metaphor fo...more

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Mar 20, 2012 Kerrie marked it as to-read

Shelves: salon-com-reviewed

This is a review from the website Salon.com. I am using it as a reminder for why I want to read this novel. Written by Heidi Julavits. We read one of her books in our book club.

For all that we think of our world as somehow post-feminist, the words “women’s fiction” and “high literature” still seen to occupy different real estate, and I don’t need to say which of these rents space 17 floors below the penthouse. Heidi Julavits has spent much of her career as a writer of fiction — this is her four...more This is a review from the website Salon.com. I am using it as a reminder for why I want to read this novel. Written by Heidi Julavits. We read one of her books in our book club.

For all that we think of our world as somehow post-feminist, the words “women’s fiction” and “high literature” still seen to occupy different real estate, and I don’t need to say which of these rents space 17 floors below the penthouse. Heidi Julavits has spent much of her career as a writer of fiction — this is her fourth novel — using the brute strength of her considerable intellect and ambitious style to winch the nonworking elevator to the top of the building. In most of her work, the world of female concerns becomes, simply, the world.

In “The Uses of Enchantment” (2006), Julavits turned a surveyor’s eye on the emotional life of girls at the brink of womanhood, unsure how to get there after the road signs were unscrupulously switched by adults who should have been more considerate guides. Here she coined the style of compression she uses to impressive effect in her new novel, and for many of the same psychologically observant aims (“Part of her allure could be attributed to the fact that people felt self-congratulatory when they discovered it, as though this said something special about them and their unique powers of perception”).

With “The Vanishers,” Julavits continues the large project of employing fiction to advance a theory of startling truth: Women’s inner lives are replete with destructive fury. The vaunted givers and nurturers of life pay dearly, psychically, for their gifts. In this novel the baleful forces usually directed inward take literal form, and the cast of characters injuring one another in inventive ways are, in fact, psychics, those who can see (and bleed from) the manifestations of mother-daughter hurt.

The first-person narrator is Julia Severn, a student at the Institute of Integrated Parapsychology (located in hippie-tweedy New Hampshire, of course) and the stenographer of its most celebrated professor, Madame Ackermann. In a reverse case of anxiety of influence, Ackermann forces Julia, an obviously gifted psychic, to flee the academy. Julia undergoes her mentor’s brutal “psychic attack” — chronic debilitation resembling the mysterious 21st-century psychosomatic illnesses that seem to plague women exclusively — and is thenceforth pulled into an occult thriller’s action. The story takes us in turn to a film conference in New York, a “pricey psychic attack recovery center” that is also a plastic surgery hospital treating Hungarian landed gentry and a class known as “surgical impersonators” (in Vienna, heart of the psychoanalytic heartland), a Paris visited through astral projection, and a spa ominously situated in “Breganz-Belken.” And in the end, it is all because of Mommy. She (a suicide, hence the book’s frequent Plath quotations) is both the giver of life and of all the pain that follows.

Although fiction of the futurist or paranormal variety often suffers from a certain effortful specificity — protons, gravity, and time may behave in ways no Einstein could parse, but by gum here’s something clearly meant to be recognized as a Little Debbie snack cake — Julavits avoids the form’s faux flavor by hewing carefully to emotional truth. Instances of which may well be met by the reader with all the unlikely joy of hitting big on a scratch-off ticket:

…perhaps it was the crying woman’s mention of the unread library books, because truly there was nothing sadder, except a gift that a person has hand made for you, a scarf or a poncho, that, try as you might, you cannot ever see your way into wearing. This is when the cold indifference of the world envelops you, and makes you feel invigorated by emotion but also acutely alone. These moments of heartbreak for unwanted scarves and unread books can reveal to you, more than the inattention of any long dead mother, what it is to be alive.

Julavits has sometimes been called on the carpet for flaunting her smartness, but in these pages she is not showing off; she can’t help it. More to the point, it is of a piece with her enterprise: to create a vaulting novel of ideas. In fluid form, she advances the radical notion of an essential, and unsolvable, sadness that afflicts the state of being female, since if their only worldly currency is the time-stamped value of their bodies, women enact a tragedy every time they bear the daughters who will usurp it. Housing such a subject in the empty shell of a ridiculous pseudoscience shows Julavits a canny deployer of irony.

(She can also be as fun to settle down with as the Sunday crossword puzzle: Madame Ackermann’s story is braided with that of Dominique Varga, “the Leni Riefenstahl of France,” who toys avant-gardishly with porn (hmmm, 6 Across: Chantal Akerman?); Julia’s room overlooks Gutenberg Square, a tip of the author’s hat to the history of books; count how many chairs make cameo appearances, from Barcelona to Biedermeier.)

It would be annoying if “The Vanishers” were merely up to this sort of literate gamesmanship, or even to highlighting Julavits’ exceptional talent at writing smarty-pants provocateuses, who figure with enough frequency in her work that we might venture a guess at the author’s own conversational style. Rather, the book’s decorative nature — reading it can feel like you’re admiring housewares in the type of high-end shop where every item is the best of its class — plays profitably against its raw gravity. At one point the enrapt anger and bootless desire that are the two laces in the mother-daughter knot find expression thus: “a violent wave of need surged through me. A need to pull her hair, tear her face to pieces with my teeth. A need to kiss her.” A disfigurement, and a kiss. What a pretty collision they make.

(less)

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Aug 04, 2012 Kathy rated it 1 of 5 stars

This was the first book I selected because it was a goodreads recommendation for me. And then --with back cover recommendations from Jennifer Egan and Karen Russell I thought I was in sfor a real treat. What a disappointment. The premise was interesting (Julia Severn leaves a school for psychic phenomena after her powers threaten her mentor who then psychically stalks her as she seeks to unravel the early life of her mother who committed suicide when she was an infant). However, I had difficulty...more

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Jun 16, 2012 CRO rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: hey-theres-a-dead-girl-in-my-book, murder-mystery, psychological-fiction, paranormal-urban-fantasy, oprah-made-me-do-it, books-read-in-2012

3 Stars

Be warned - lots of horrendous use of metaphor and not to the point anecdote ahead.

When I was in 6th grade I got to be apart of an advanced readers group. One of books we read was called A Door in the Wall – it was about a young man living during the medieval era, during the plagues, who contracted some disease (probably polio?) that left him with very limited use of his legs. The book was about his trials and tribulations and how he overcame his adversities and had a triumph of the spir...more

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About Heidi Julavits

Heidi Suzanne Julavits is an American author and co-editor of The Believer magazine. She has been published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2, Esquire, Story, Zoetrope All-Story, and McSweeney's Quarterly. Her novels include The Mineral Palace (2000), The Effect of Living Backwards (2003) and The Uses of Enchantment (2006) and The Vanishers (2012).

She was born and grew up in Portland, Maine,...more

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“He was uninterested in art, politics, culture, people. While his brain burrowed through rock toward a very specific knowledge goal, mine preferred to warren the air; his brain operated a drill bit while mine launched a thousand aimless kites that tangled strings or bounced along the invisible currents, disconnected and alone. Cognitively, we were the gravitational negatives of each other. Sometimes I wished I had his brain. But only sometimes. He suffered due to his specialized excesses; he just suffered differently from me.” — 2 people liked it

“Or perhaps it was the crying woman's mention of the unread library books, because truly there was nothing sadder, except a gift that a person has hand made for you, a scarf or a poncho, that, try as you might, you cannot ever see your way into wearing. This is when the cold indifference of the world envelops you, and makes you feel invigorated by emotion but also acutely alone.” — 1 person liked it

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