Today I am delighted to share a review of How We Disappear by Tara Lynn Masih. I read her stunning and powerful My Real Name is Hanna in 2018. Check out my thoughts.
My Thoughts:
What a stunning connection of short stories capturing loss, those who "disappear" in various ways, and hope for the future. In twelve short stories and a novella, Tara Lynn Masih has penned her most exquisite work yet.
My favorite story was Birdman, about a trip an American woman takes to visit her father's grave in Belgium. The emotions here rocked me to my core.
I also fell in love with If You Had Stopped, where the world is falling apart and a woman is sharing her whole heart.
Salt was another favorite; it's pure magic.
They are all favorites, though. I loved every single one, and I would read them all again. I'm sure each time I read them, I will garner a new discovery.
Highly recommended for fans of immersive, beautiful, lyrical storytelling. I have a short list of favorite short storytellers. Tara Lynn Masih is on that short list.
I received a gifted copy.
About the Book:
A MILLIONS MOST ANTICIPATED FALL SELECTION
In How We Disappear, award-winning author Tara Lynn Masih offers readers transporting and compelling stories of those taken, those missing, and those neither here nor gone—runaways, exiles, wanderers, ghosts, even the elusive Dame Agatha Christie. From the remote Siberian taiga to the harsh American frontier, from rural Long Island to postwar Belgium, Masih's characters are diverse in identity and circumstance, defying the burden of erasure by disappearing into or emerging from physical and emotional landscapes.
Described as "masterful" and as "striking and resonant" (Publishers Weekly), Masih's fiction, crossing boundaries between historical and contemporary, sparks with awareness that nothing and no one is ever gone for good—and that the wilderness is never quite behind us.
A virtuoso collection of stories that spin around an axis of loss and rediscovery.
—Tina May Hall, author of The Snow Collectors and winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize
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.
—Sara Lippmann, author of Jerks and Doll Palace, Longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award
These stories are concise, unsparing, lyrical, always daring.
—Michael Parker, O. Henry Award–winning author of Prairie Fever
About the Author:
My Real Name Is Hanna, Tara's bestselling debut novel for young readers and adults set in WW II Ukraine, was a finalist in the National Jewish Book Awards and received the Julia Ward Howe Award for Young Readers, a Florida Book Award (YA, Gold), a Skipping Stones Honor Award, a Foreword Book of the Year Award (Historical, Gold), and it appeared on Shelf Unbound's 2019 Notable List, Goodreads' 2018 Ultimate Fall YA Reading List, and their Best of the Month Sept. YA list. Hanna also released in Slovakia and in Poland. She is working on a second WWII novel set in the States. Her forthcoming story collection, How We Disappear, releases Sept. 2022 and was selected for THE MILLIONS "Most Anticipated" Fall List.
AITL Media selected Tara for an Inspirational Woman in Literature Award. She is also editor of the acclaimed Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction and The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays. She founded The Best Small Fictionsseries.
Tara received an MA in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College, has been widely anthologized, and her essays have been read on NPR and translated into dance.
Awards for her fiction include first place in The Ledge Magazine's fiction contest, a finalist fiction grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, The Lou P. Bunce Creative Writing Award, multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, and Best New American Voices and Best of the Web nominations.
Tara was the assistant editor for STORIES literary magazine, and a regular contributor to The Indian-American and Masala magazines. She lives in the wetlands of St. Augustine, Florida.
Have you read How We Disappear, or is it on your TBR? Happy Reading! ~ Jennifer THR
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