Far-ranging and Intimate: A Review of Tara Lynn Masih's HOW WE DISAPPEAR

Tara Lynn Masih’s impressive second collection, How We Disappear, encompasses a range of time periods, locales, and styles: two-page flash to novella, realism to ghost story, historical fiction to modern American myth. Luscious descriptions of the natural world help to illuminate a theme bonding these thirteen diverse stories: the mysterious human heart in search of itself and its place in the world.

In the perceptive “Those Who Have Gone,” a weary Elizabeth travels from New York to Arizona in search of something different. Almost immediately she meets Blaze, a local man who looks like her ex-husband and has her pegged from the start. More dialogue than is usual in Masih’s stories effectively develops Blaze’s character, while Elizabeth’s inner life is stated in quiet, compelling prose, “The signs of death and violence before and behind her told her to leave. But something about the man told her to stay. So she stepped sideways in her mind, tried to accept his casual demeanor as her own.” As Elizabeth contemplates the land she’s getting to know, the story’s setting and circular structure deliver even deeper meanings. Some disappearances are forever; but once you know how to look, you can spot their traces.

Traces left behind are a major part of “Notes to THE WORLD,” the story of Grigori’s first hunting season, mere weeks into a months-long contract with a co-op. Told with convincing detail, the survival skills learned from his mother and his neighbors will be tested, nothing euphemistic about what it takes to stay alive in the Siberian Taiga. After a near-fatal accident, recovering in a cabin he’s stumbled upon, Grigori discovers a stack of numbered notes written by Desya, daughter of a family of persecuted Old Believers. He’s drawn into her story of having to live in hiding. He shares her losses and her aching loneliness. “His fear was with him each morning when he woke up in his village to the birds and white sun that fought to penetrate the northern mists. It settled on his chest so hard sometimes, he struggled to breathe and be part of life once again.” Grigori’s growing relationship with Desya’s unseen presence parallels the reader’s experience, a complex blend of immediacy and time-travel.

Even more complex in themes and imagery is “An Aura Surrounds That Night,” an immersive account told by Mercy, the oldest of so-called Irish twins, the dynamic of their farming family an echo of the Biblical Esau and Jacob. The short opening section deserves to be fully quoted, but here’s a snippet: “One memory was once locked up, hidden, in the same way these small colored bits of rectangular prophecies are folded into doughy shells. These papers that stay curled up…until we…tear them out of their protective shelters and examine them privately or read them aloud.” The narrator’s memories are replete with sensory details, such as a childhood outing with the sisters wearing “…dresses ironed so recently that you could still feel the warmth where the iron last passed over the cotton.” The wise woman of their coastal Long Island community hints at a solution for those who leave and for those who stay, applicable to other characters in this collection. The whole last section is a lyrical, place-laden resolution of healing, a way to move forward after tragedy; a rare and precious thing, for the reader as well as for Mercy.

Rarer is the writer who leaves no traces of herself, allowing the characters to wield their own singular voices, yet Masih has achieved it in each of her far-ranging yet intimate stories. Some characters yearn to disappear, some for only a time, ultimately realizing their paths follow or align with another; some characters have no choice. But they all do what the best of fiction does, they stay with the reader.