Vanished

Stories

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Pub Date 01 Sep 2022 | Archive Date 31 Aug 2022

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Description

Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Vanished tells the stories of women and girls in upstate New York who are often overlooked or unseen by the people around them. The characters range from an aging art professor whose students are uninterested in learning what she has to teach, to a young girl who becomes the victim of a cruel prank in a swimming pool, to a television producer who regrets allowing her coworkers into her mother’s bird-filled house to film a show about animal hoarding because it will reveal too much about her family and past.

Humorous and empathetic, the collection exposes the adversity in each character’s life; each deals with something or someone who has vanished—a person close to her, a friendship, a relationship—as she seeks to make sense of the world around her in the wake of that loss.
 

Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Vanished tells the stories of women and girls in upstate New York who are often overlooked or unseen by the people around them. The...


Advance Praise

“In this compassionate, unapologetic, and hilarious collection, Karin Lin-Greenberg’s unmistakably unique voice shines. The human struggle for connection guides us through each story’s surprising world of art, pop culture, school, difficult relationships, and weird animals. I fell in love with these edgy, lost characters who bump into enlightenment by accident, and only after wading through oceans of denial and terrible choices. Vanished is a celebration of our flawed humanity.”—Erika Krouse, author of Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation


“The stories in Karin Lin-Greenberg’s Vanished do not shy away from our current moment of division and estrangement. Like Richard Yates’s Eleven Kinds of Loneliness or Stephanie Vaughn’s Sweet Talk, Lin-Greenberg’s Vanished is peopled with characters who are bitter and funny and who do questionable things—and who are, as a result, imminently human, unquestioningly alive on the page. An engrossing and extraordinary book by a true master of the form.”—Nick White, author of Sweet and Low

“In this compassionate, unapologetic, and hilarious collection, Karin Lin-Greenberg’s unmistakably unique voice shines. The human struggle for connection guides us through each story’s surprising...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781496232571
PRICE $19.95 (USD)
PAGES 216

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Average rating from 5 members


Featured Reviews

This is a collection on loss and losing. As with most short story collections, some are more poignant than others, but I found this to be a thought-provoking look at how we cope with our suffering when something we cherish no longer exists. Done with humor and wit, it was an enjoyable read.

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Interesting and well written I just personally couldn’t get into the story. Just a little slow and unbelievable at some points. As with all short story complications some were a lot better than others. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

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A somewhat optimistic look at potentially sad or un-fun circumstances. This is a pretty good collection of stories. I liked the writing style, and look forward to the author's future work.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

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𝑰𝒕 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒃𝒆 𝒂𝒏 𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉, 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒚 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉.

This collection begins with 𝑆𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒, where an arts professor in New York is disenchanted with the younger generation of artists. She thinks of them as ‘dabblers’ who aren’t passionate about honing their skills, for without a big following like her younger colleagues who have gallery shows in New York City, she is unable to instruct the more serious students she desires to educate. Her style of painting is out of fashion, worse, with the demands of her life she hasn’t been as prolific in her career as she wanted to be. Did she settle after tenure? She is getting older, and the art she sees the younger generation produce turns her off. They seem to want it all to be so easy. The people the students admire are hardly able to produce anything beyond ‘squiggles and blobs’ and know nothing of technique. Her frustration grows when she procures stuffed pheasants for her intermediate students to draw. I liked this, it’s quiet but the offense Alice takes at the changing times, it’s something most people will feel at a point in their life, when you feel cut off from popular culture.

In 𝐻𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑘𝑒𝑒𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔, a brush with tragedy leads to small fame for a maid and a chance for to get out of her small town, leaving her younger sister surprised to be the one left behind. A twelve-year-old blind and partially deaf raccoon is meant to be a lesson in kindness and compassion for students in 𝑅𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑅𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑜𝑛, an idea middle school teacher Ms. Gardner thinks is pointless. She has witnessed far too much cruelty and meanness to imagine even a furry creature piercing their cold hearts. Will it work? 𝑉𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 is about Margaret’s new roommate at college. She isn’t thrilled by Hayley, someone far more extroverted than she is, too open and friendly. Over Thanksgiving weekend Margaret goes home, Hayley decides to go camping in the Adirondacks, what follows is a shocking terror and a lucky escape from danger, it also stretches their thin bond even further, until Margaret feels abandoned. She was just beginning to think they could become friends, was finally making an effort.

𝐿𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑟 𝐷𝑎𝑚𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑑 is my favorite story, so ugly is the behavior and yet so typical when a girl feels threated by the shine of another. Why are girls mean to each other, well sometimes it’s as simple as loyalty and long standing friendship. It’s a phase some never outgrow, but most do, thankfully. The tales are about ordinary people, how they cope with life or hide from it, even if it’s with mountains of junk in their home and birds, or behind their cynicism. I felt the author was pointing out how thoughtlessly we put people through tar and feathering with all the ‘self-help’ type of shows as well as the shallowness of the series that aim to find love. Can we deny they are often trashy and dehumanizing? Well written stories about imperfect people, I would love to read a novel by Karin-Lin Greenburg. She writes about people who could actually exist, whose paths are a natural trajectory most of us confront. As for her teenage characters, they aren’t ridiculously maniacal but do behave as children who are trying to fit in and figure out who they are. Good stuff.

Publication Date: September 1, 2022

University of Nebraska Press

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