Ways to Disappear: Stories

by Victoria Lancelotta, Cristina Rivera Garza (Foreword)

The stories in Victoria Lancelotta’s  Ways to Disappear excavate the unexamined places between dread and desire, promise and threat, where the body is both prison and salvation. Populated by the grieving and the exultant and those who see no difference between the two, by men and women who are only a little bit broken and boys and girls who can’t wait to be, by souls untethered, rootless, yet bound by blood and flesh, Lancelotta’s characters are driven by the irresistible need to be a bigger part of the worlds they each inhabit, by turns strange and commonplace. In language lush and jagged, never sentimental, these stories scrutinize the exhaustion and enchantment of the houses seething with resentment and devotion, cars dream-full and hurtling the children in them into a world they think they know but can’t imagine; front porches, back yards, luxury hotels, and truck stops. Lancelotta understands that sometimes people check their wounds not to see if they’ve healed, but to be sure they’re still there.    

262 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2023

About the author

Victoria Lancelotta’s Ways To Disappear: Stories was the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Contest winner. She is also the author of Here in the World: 13 Stories, and
the novels Far and Coeurs Blesses. Her short fiction has been included in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and magazines including Agni, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and others.
She has been a fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Djerassi Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony, and is the recipient of a Tennessee Individual Artist Fellowship, multiple Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grants, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

Reviews

[derek allard · Rating 4 out of 5]

An awesome, if at times depressing but always honest, short story collection revolving around a woman’s place (or lack thereof) in a male focused world. The short story, “You are Here” is a marvelous thing that spans a lifetime of a character in a dozen or so pages. Highly recommended.

[Ben Thurau · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the first four stories. I enjoyed them but didn't feel hooked.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why has this book not received more recognition?!? I read through it like I didnt have ADHD. Typical me fashion, late to the game updating my page count.