Book review: Explore faith and psyche in ‘The Vanishing Place’

Zoë Rankin: It likely won’t be long before she’s climbing the bestseller charts and sitting amongst the literary greats in a well-earned space.

• The Vanishing Place
•  By Zoë Rankin
• Review: Chloe Barrett

It’s easy to see why a publisher snapped up Zoë Rankin’s debut novel after reading only the first chapter — and thank goodness for that. This mesmerising thriller plunges the reader straight into the murky New Zealand wilderness and pulls back the curtain on what can happen in the isolated, rural darkness.

No time is wasted in the opening pages of The Vanishing Place. The small-town scene is swiftly set as a mysterious eight-year-old girl wanders into a supermarket, filthy, malnourished, and covered in blood. Before the town’s only policeman can rush to investigate, she has already guzzled a bottle of milk and helped herself to some juicy strawberries.

But what strikes Constable Lewis Weston as strangest of all upon his arrival is that the little girl, who says her name is Anya, looks exactly like another child who vanished from the town nearly 20 years earlier, only that girl was called Effie.

The novel, told largely from Effie’s perspective, weaves between the present year of 2025 and the late 1990s, alternating with each chapter.

The Vanishing Place, by Zoe Rankin

As a child, Effie grows up with her younger siblings deep in the bush, a vast, remote stretch of New Zealand woodland cut off from civilisation in every way.

After their mother dies in childbirth, young Effie becomes a surrogate parent to her sister Tia, brother Aiden, and the newborn baby her siblings name Four, due to him being the fourth born.

Their father, shattered by grief and haunted by wicked demons, disappears for days into the forest and returns each time with a terrifying darkness in his eyes.

The children are forced to fend for themselves in the wilderness, and they soon learn that no matter how alone they feel, monsters are always lurking in the shadows — and within the people they love.

“Effie stuck out her tongue, catching the specks of rain, then yelled at the sky. The breeze blew through her, chilling her skin, and she shouted again. Like if she screamed hard enough, all the hurt and darkness that she’d inherited from him might ebb away.” 

Now, years later, Effie lives a quiet life in a remote Scottish village with her loyal dog, Rimu, and is cut off from the family she left behind. Yet no matter how hard she tries, she cannot shake the traces of the bush or the horrors that still haunt her memory.

After vowing to never return to the place of her nightmares, an unexpected call from policeman Lewis — who was her first love — and the sudden appearance of Anya threatens to shatter everything Effie has built for herself.

But she is the only one who knows exactly how to find the bush, and who the peculiar child will trust. After all the time that she has spent running from her past, Effie might just be the missing link in the mystery that has haunted the town of Koraha ever since her disappearance.

“The route was ingrained in her. Every land marker. Every bend in the river. As the oldest child, she had the bush etched into her skin — Dad had made sure of that.” 

The Vanishing Place is an addictive, atmospheric read that refuses to play it safe. Zoë Rankin delivers a gripping and unflinching exploration of faith, isolation, and the slow crumbling of the human psyche when trapped in darkness.

Nothing is off limits for Rankin, and it likely won’t be long before she’s climbing the bestseller charts and sitting amongst the literary greats in a well-earned space.