author of Bronze Drum Phong Nguyen
The breadth and diversity of the stories in How We Disappear illustrate the vast possibilities of human experience.”
author of Doll Palace Sara Lippmann
Explores the aching presence of the absent and the absence of those present, in stories that read like instant classics.”
October Hill Magazine
From American fables to ghost stories…a collection that is equally cohesive as it is explorative.”
Lit Pub
Far-ranging yet intimate stories.”
AudioFile
Six talented narrators work together to deliver these immersive short stories, which explore the lasting effect of absence or disappearance upon people’s lives.”
Small Press Picks
Each story is its own richly detailed, mesmerizing world.”
Booklist
Explores the inevitability and necessity of change and how even the most fleeting of moments are never truly forgotten, in this mesmerizing collection of short stories.”
Southern Literary Review
Characters that manage to feel unique and yet familiar at the same time and settings so full of sensory details they become characters in themselves. This fine collection is a worthy addition to any bookshelf.”
Kirkus Reviews
Centered on the theme of disappearance…a beautiful and carefully written work that deftly searches below the surface…Luminous tales set in evocative environments that explore how remarkable people can fade away.”
Midwest Book Review
Engaging, entertaining, original, thought-provoking…and unreservedly recommended.”
Whiting Award–winning author of Site Fidelit Claire Boyles
In How We Disappear, Masih’s characters move out of, into, and through vivid, beautifully rendered landscapes—of the world and of the self…A powerful collection.”
From the Publisher
In How We Disappear, Masih's characters move out of, into, and through vivid, beautifully rendered landscapes-of the world and of the self. Disappearing acts are urgent and necessary, leading to a deeply interior sense of redemption and connection. A powerful collection. -Claire Boyles, author of Site Fidelity, winner of a 2022 Whiting Award
A virtuoso collection of stories that spin around an axis of loss and rediscovery, where things thought gone forever magically reappear in new guises. Tara Lynn Masih has created a world of stolen girls, magic livestock, ghost towns, enchanted confections, and forbidden love that is underpinned in equal measure by wry humor and peril. These are middle-of-the night stories, secret messages carried on desert winds, spider-web invitations that make you want to stay and dream some more. -Tina May Hall, author of The Snow Collectors and winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize
How We Disappear traffics, beautifully, in the liminal spaces between past and present, imagination and memory. These stories are concise, unsparing, lyrical, always daring. -Michael Parker, O. Henry Award-winning author of Prairie Fever
With sweeping intelligence and effortless command, Masih deftly explores the aching presence of the absent, and the absence of those present, in stories that read like instant classics-timely, and yet, of another time. . . . These are sensual, transporting stories that traverse the globe . . . as they burrow deep and stay within long after we finish reading. -Sara Lippmann, author of Jerks and Doll Palace, Longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award
How We Disappear is stunning and startling, splendid and spectral, in so many ways. Tara Lynn Masih has offered us a mesmerizing collection. -Stacy D. Flood, author of The Salt Fields: A Novella, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist
The breadth and diversity of the stories in How We Disappear illustrate the vast possibilities of human experience. . . . The characters who populate the collection are driven by impulses stronger than their own understandings, and it is often by following those impulses that they find their salvation. The result is a book that explores with insight the role of instinct in human life. How We Disappear reveals the strange animals that we are, and the wondrous beings our minds make of us. -Phong Nguyen, author of The Bronze Drum
The ink is never pale in How We Disappear, and neither are the memories. With each story, I became more and more amazed. Masih is a frotteur in the old sense, rubbing words together to make distant worlds surface and come alive in rich, lush, and engrossing detail. As a writer, I always learn more about writing from Tara Lynn Masih. As a reader, I'm always carried away by her stories. -Grant Faulkner, author of Fissures and The Art of Brevity
Kirkus Reviews
2022-10-24
This fiction collection, centered on the theme of disappearance, is international in scope and examines complex emotional relationships.
Made up of short stories and a novella, this volume travels around the globe, from the American Southwest to a Puerto Rican beach town and the Siberian taiga. Exploring the inner thoughts of those who lead private lives, the haunting “What You Can’t See in the Picture” is about a photo/video analyst with a police department who helps track down a kidnapper. “Fleeing Gravity” captures almost the entire life span of a Native American man in the West. The short but satisfying “Agatha: A Life in Unauthorized Fragments” re-creates key moments in Agatha Christie’s life from the mystery writer’s perspective, including the loss of her dream of a music career and her well-known disappearance (“But you have done your job too well, and the only way out, when Archie finds you, is for him to declare you are mentally unwell”). The disappearance motif, which at times is a mere possibility, extends to the Caribbean in “Delight,” in which a Puerto Rican girl, skilled in making confections, longs for the return of an American surfer. The finale is a novella, An Aura Surrounds That Night, a heartfelt yarn about a farm girl who is taken in by a dynamic woman from the South. Masih’s collection is a beautiful and carefully written work that deftly searches below the surface for the personal feelings of the diverse characters and blends them with the oftentimes stunning outside world. Some tales are very short, just a few pages, and those work well on an aesthetic level but don’t have enough substance to be truly striking. More rewarding are the longer stories like “Notes to THE WORLD,” in which a Russian hunter finds an old diary in a cabin that takes him back a century in time.
Luminous tales set in evocative environments that explore how remarkable people can fade away.
