VANISHING

If you don't eat, you gain so much in experience--lightness, release from gravity and the weight of the body, escape from the self, and ascent. You can actually leave behind the difficulties and encumbrances of life. This is what Alice learns in the hospital, where she finds respite from her neglectful father, her alcoholic mother, and her abusive stepfather. There she also finds a friend in Rex, who understands what it is to teeter on the knife edge between life and death. Brooks's novel, with its heavy emphasis on dialogue, requires the skills of master narrator Christina Moore, who captures Alice's alternating acerbity and solemnity as she struggles against a life and relationships she can no longer face. And Moore's Rex, Prince of Remission, is a genius of sarcasm and melodrama. Between his lengthy speeches, he entertains with wit, his best defense against the terror of impending early death. T.B. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 01]