The Vanishing Man is a collection of linked short stories about a man trying to come to terms with his past, a religious upbringing, in an ever-changing personal world that constantly throws him into self-doubt. He marries, finds happiness, only to go through a terrible divorce. He recovers, finds true love, marries, and goes through another terrible divorce and family death. He goes into therapy and tries to make sense of his failures and unhappiness by attempting to reclaim his past life. But this only partly succeeds. It’s not until the man discovers his true self that he is finally able to find hope, and his love of life again.
This is a book about faith, families, and the meaning of love, told from a distinctly masculine point of view. The men in these stories are often defined by what they don’t say, what they do instead, and how they react to each other between the lies and between the lines. They are often right about everything except themselves and it’s within this hazy, poetic world of self-doubt that the narrator of the stories lives and breathes.
“Bushkowsky … delights in the comic possibilities of misfiring language, in conversations that stumble comically as if the dancers have forgotten the dance.”
“Bushkowsky is a keenly comic writer.”
“Bushkowsky the playwright connects with Bushkowsky the poet in these seventeen linked stories. At turns comic and touching, The Vanishing Man explores the complex bonds of family, marriage, and the faithful to the unbelieving, through characters fully human and half crazy.”
“You can’t read Bushkowsky without experiencing a kind of refreshing weightlessness.”