Celia Lily disappears at the start of this suspense story named after the town of VANISHING FALLS. This Tasmanian town once thrived on apple orchards, but we are walked through the dwindling of the town’s prosperity, due to government mishandling. The spectacular waterfall soaks into a cavern in the rainforest; the setting as character is foremost in this tale of misadventure, unreliable narrators and impoverished lives.
Joelle Smithton is the most sympathetic character. She is neuro-diverse, generally thought of as a bit simple and strange but likely on the Asperger’s spectrum. Her butcher husband, Brian, is highly protective. Celia’s husband Jack Lily, a wealthy art collector, lives with Celia and their kids in the remnant of past glory, Calendar House. He – for no reason I can find - is friends with Cliff, a meth-addicted chicken farmer. Meth is ravaging the area. Cliff has a long-suffering wife, Kim. We meet everyone, including Celia. A social event or two occur before Jack comes home one night to find his wife's coat, jewelry and glass of champagne the only traces of her. As he would appear to be better off if she had died, he is immediately suspect.
Australian contemporary fiction now tends to reflect upon the early colonial past, and how the indigenous people suffered at the hands of those who wanted the good land. This contemporary tale has at times a historic, almost gothic feel as it uses the device of a painting to imagine how the valley looked to early settlers, and then the device of a local name change to whitewash past, hideous deeds. Well, who would want to live in Murdering Creek? Today we see a hunt get under way for the missing woman, as three separate narrators gradually piece together the inevitability of Celia’s fate.
The police seem totally inept at finding meth dealers, so I would not have any great faith in their abilities or funding. Indeed, local search parties do most of the work. Joelle is first bewildered, then is befriended and threatened by various others as she blurts out any odd activity she has observed, all in an attempt to find the socialite who seldom noticed her. Because in a town gone to seed, everyone has some secret to hide. I was swiftly drawn in to the situation, but the last pages felt phoned in, rushed through in omniscient narrator mode as if to meet a deadline. For this reason I won’t call the novel by Poppy Gee a masterly piece of work, but VANISHING FALLS is only her second release so I am sure she’s headed in that direction.
Celia Lily is rich, beautiful, and admired. She’s also missing. And the search for the glamorous socialite is about to expose all the dark, dirty secrets of Vanishing Falls…
Deep within the lush Tasmanian rainforest is the remote town of Vanishing Falls, a place with a storied past. The town’s showpiece, built in the 1800s, is its Calendar House—currently occupied by Jack Lily, a prominent art collector and landowner; his wife, Celia; and their four daughters. The elaborate, eccentrically designed mansion houses one masterpiece and 52 rooms—and Celia Lily isn’t in any of them. She has vanished without a trace.…
Joelle Smithton knows that a few folks in Vanishing Falls believe that she’s simple-minded. It’s true that Joelle’s brain works a little differently—a legacy of shocking childhood trauma. But Joelle sees far more than most people realize, and remembers details that others cast away. For instance, she knows that Celia’s husband, Jack, has connections to unsavory local characters whom he’s desperate to keep hidden. He’s not the only one in town with something to conceal. Even Joelle’s own husband, Brian, a butcher, is acting suspiciously. While the police flounder, unable to find Celia, Joelle is gradually parsing the truth from the gossip she hears and from the simple gestures and statements that can unwittingly reveal so much.
Just as the water from the falls disappears into the ground, gushing away through subterranean creeks, the secrets in Vanishing Falls are pulsing through the town, about to converge. And when they do, Joelle must summon the courage to reveal what really happened to Celia, even if it means exposing her own past…