Ways to Disappear Stories

The stories in Ways to Disappear beautifully articulate the anxieties and aspirations of contemporary life. Victoria Lancelotta's prose is lyrical, intuitive, and expansive. She opens up the small space of a story and breathes life into unexplored corners. She captures the prickling, quick fire actions that kindle in adolescence, but her antenna is good, too, when it comes to reporting on the more cautious, more subterannean passions and difficulties of adult life. "You are Here" is an astonishing story and the rest of the collection doesn't disappoint." - Kelly Link

"Let's say they're organizing a race. Let's say word reaches me Lancelotta's among the runners. What I do is lay my bet on Lancelotta. Heaven help us, there is a race. When is there not a race? This is how the world is organized-run, run, run. Is there any having a world wrought otherwise? So be it. My money's well wagered. Lancelotta, Lancelotta, Lancelotta!" - Gordon Lish

"Victoria Lancelotta's new book, Ways to Disappear, is a tour de force of short fiction, it's as tough and broad and wide ranging as a killer novel, as rich line-for-line as the finest poem, and it is mean. It spares not the author, the characters, the relationships, the siblings, the husbands and wives. There is a richness here that is rarely found in contemporary fiction. From the opening piece to the closing the work is touching and masterful, gritty, sharp-edged, unsparing. It's not a tea party. What it is is consistently heartbreaking and true, a world alive, characters that see, feel, experience the full measure of unfiltered emotions, heartbreak, longing, caring, hoping, wishing, waiting. Ways to Disappear is a sublime collection, astonishing, thrilling, hard as nails, bright as ice." - Frederick Barthelme