Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

Genre: Fiction

Publication Date: 2005
Pages: 418
Challenges: A-Z Reading #23 (V Title), TBR 2008 Alternate #3

Once again Jodi Picoult tackles a subject, or in this case multiple subjects, and makes me consider them from multiple viewpoints.

Delia Hopkins is living in New Hampshire with her daughter and father. She’s engaged to be married and her happy life seems to be ready to continue. Then she learns that her life is not what she thought. Her father is accused of kidnapping her when she was 4 years old. He never took her back to his ex-wife after his normal visitation weekend and instead took her across the country and raised her on his own, telling her that her mother died in a car crash.

This story is told by multiple narrators. It’s primarily told by Delia and the 3 men who love her most; her father, her fiancé, and her best friend. In a convention that worked well in My Sister’s Keeper, each narrator is represented in the book by a different type font which makes it easy for me as a reader to make the shift when the next narrator picks up the story.

There are many aspects to the story including, trust, truthfulness, how memories work, what honesty do you owe to family, lovers, friends. This was one that I was always disappointed when I had to put it down and go back to work, or whatever needed doing. I would have loved to just sit down and read this one straight through.

I realy enjoyed this book. The sections about Delia working with her bloodhound Greta in search and rescue were quite interesting.