HOW WE DISAPPEAR

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.