The Vanishers - Part 3 (January 2015)

[Casceil]

In part three we move to the Goergen, a sort of special clinic for plastic surgery patients and Vanishers. While it seems an odd combination, they have something in common. Some are using plastic surgery as a way of changing who they are. The Vanishers are also leaving old lives behind and changing. We meet some interesting new characters, including Borka.

[Whitney]

The combination of plastic surgery patients/ psychic attack victims was a tad odd. Did this seem to you to have a larger design behind it, or was it just a way to bring various characters together?

[Casceil]

I think there was a larger design behind it, in that many of the plastic surgery patients were trying to change not just what they looked like, but who they were. The vanishers were "vanishing" because of psychic attacks, but plastic surgery was an important part of how they were vanishing (by becoming someone new).

[Whitney]

That makes sense. The implication of the self-indulgence of the idle rich that I associate with these kind of European spa / clinics brings me back to the question of how seriously Julavits is taking the psychic elements of the novel.

[Peter]

I think its enough that the characters take the psychic elements seriously. It may simply not matter if the rest of the world does or not.