The New York Times Book Review - Catherine Lacey
A novel starring a novelist can often seem a little pleased with itself, as if the author is looking over her shoulder, eager to make a great drama from a greatly uneventful thing…But Novey has wholly eluded the hazards of writing about writers. Instead, this lush and tightly woven novel manages to be a meditation on all forms of translation while still charging forward with the momentum of a bullet…Novey writes with cool precision and breakneck pacing…
The New York Times - Carmela Ciuraru
Ms. Novey, an accomplished poet and translator, sustains suspense throughout with beautifully restrained prose. Yet her narrative is more than a mystery—it's about language itself, both the yearning for comprehension and the desire to feel understood.
Publishers Weekly
★ 10/26/2015
Poet and translator Novey’s briskly paced first novel is a clever literary mystery and a playful portrait of the artist as a young translator. Novey depicts her heroine, Emma, becoming embroiled in the life of an enigmatic Brazilian author, Beatriz Yagoda, whose books she has translated for years. When Beatriz, last seen puffing on a cigar and perched on a tree branch with a suitcase, goes missing, Emma leaves Pittsburgh, Pa., and her stick-in-the-mud fiancé behind to fly to Rio and find Beatriz, the author of works “so strange and spare that it felt like a whispered, secret history of the world.” Emma is convinced that these works, along with a cryptic, unfinished manuscript left behind, could elucidate the mystery of Beatriz’s whereabouts. The search is conducted alongside Beatriz’s two adult children, one who resents the “gangly tourist” and the other who seduces her, and it has its share of violence and romance—it reads like an Ali Smith novel with a fun Brazilian noir vibe. But underlying these comic noir elements is an eloquent meditation on the art and anxiety of translation, as well as a story about literature as a means of revelation and concealment: who ultimately knows more about the secretive missing woman, the translator intimately familiar with her writing or the children who have never finished any of her books? Agent: P.J. Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Associates. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
"Idra Novey, an acclaimed poet and translator of Spanish and Portugese literature, has written a debut novel that's a fast-paced, beguilingly playful, noirish literary mystery with a translator at its center. Ways to Disappear explores the meaning behind a writer's words—the way they can both hide and reveal deep truths....Novey's novel delivers on its promises in so many ways. Yes, there's carnage, but there's also exuberant love, revelations of long-buried, unhappy secrets, ruminations about what makes a satisfying life, a publisher's regrets about moral compromises in both his work and his use of his family wealth and connections, and an alternately heartfelt and wry portrait of the satisfactions and anxieties of the generally underappreciated art of translation....Ways to Disappear is concerned not just with truth and the risks of its misplacement and misinterpretation, but with the importance of close reading. It's a delightful, inventive paean to writing that generates 'real emotion' and 'genuine unease.' At one point Beatriz's publisher likens literature to steaks on a grill, testing both 'for density' as well as 'for something tender in the middle yet still heavy enough to blacken the air.' This book is seared to perfection."
—Heller McAlpin, NPR
"[An] elegant page-turner....Novey writes with cool precision and breakneck pacing....This lush and tightly woven novel manages to be a meditation on all forms of translation while still charging forward with the momentum of a bullet."—Catherine Lacey, New York Times Book Review
"[A] seductive mystery....Novey, a poet and translator, brings to her first novel a zesty comic touch and refreshing insights into the delicate processes of writing and translation."—Jane Ciabattari, BBC
"Bewitching....A tale of playful suspense that ingeniously transmutes into a profound meditation on language and love."—Elliott Holt, O, The Oprah Magazine
"Exhilarating....Sly, lovely writing.... In Raquel, Beatriz's hard-bitten daughter, [Novey] has created a heart-rending portrait of the price someone always ends up paying for genius. A writer to watch."
—Charles Finch, USA Today
"Novey's elegant, comic debut....a novel whose power of enchantment rival those of its fictional author."—Anita Felicelli, San Francisco Chronicle
"[Novey] sustains suspense throughout with beautifully restrained prose."—Carmela Ciuraru, New York Times
"Reminiscent of a Coen brothers movie....[a] spare, witty riddle of a novel."—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"Novey - poet, translator, and now novelist - has created something special with the brisk, beautiful Ways to Disappear, a book that blooms in the spaces between languages, between continents, between selves past and present."—Dustin Illingworth, Los Angeles Times
"[A] delightful debut....[moments] resonate in clever, often haunting, ways."—Katherine Hill, Philadelphia Inquirer
"Novey writes elegantly and with slanted humor about beauty, loss, abandonment, and surprising acts of self-discovery....[This novel] mimics pulp fiction on its caperish exterior, but is literary fiction in its deep center....With touches of mystery, commentary about the art of translating as well as inventing fiction, prose that reads like poetry, and snatches of actual poems, Ways to Disappear is a gem." —Jeffrey Ann Goudie, Kansas City Star
"Novey is astute, funny, and cunning in this story, which even in its brevity covers so much lush ground."
—Meredith Turits, Elle.com
"Sleek."
—Megan O'Grady, Vogue.com
"Uniquely captivating....an immensely entertaining read."—Margie Romero, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"If New Directions' reissue of Clarice Lispector's The Complete Stories left you wanting more mysterious Brazilian-lady writers, Idra Novey's debut novel is here for you."—Julia Irion Martins, Village Voice
"(A) wholly original, wickedly fun debut novel."
—Virtuoso Life
"An experimental page-turner...a canny mystery."
—Bustle
"This amazing first novel is unlike any other you've ever read. Ways to Disappear is a lush page-turner, a journey into the unique madness of modern Brazil, and a joyful ride into the crazed passion of literary creation itself. Idra Novey is a wonder of a writer."
—Hector Tobar, author of Deep Down Dark
"Idra Novey is an enchantress. Her sentences are so surprising and beautiful, her vision of the world so kaleidoscopic, that I fell immediately and permanently under the spell of this glorious novel."
—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
"With all its shimmering brilliance and insight, vividly drawn and beguiling characters, and unabashed storytelling, Ways to Disappear is the most sublime novel I've read in a long time."
—Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her Name
"At once playful and chilling. It's impossible to put this book down, or to shake its residue once you've finished it."—Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams
"With tremendous intelligence and wit, Ways to Disappear upends all the misleading memes about magical realism and in the process makes its own very real and unprecedented magic. This is a fantastic book."—Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
"Spare, funny, and moving.How can a novel so elegant and blazingly smart be so much fun?"—Ted Thompson, author of The Land of Steady Habits
"Idra Novey has given us a first rate novel of ideas, a book that is funny, poignant, and profound."—Darcey Steinke, author of Easter Everywhere
"Exceptionally witty and heartfelt is not the usual combo. Nothing about this novel is usual. Every sentence surprises. Every character intrigues. I read this book with joy and serious admiration." —Amy Bloom, author of Lucky Us
"Novey's briskly paced first novel is a clever literary mystery . . . It has its share of violence and romance-it reads like an Ali Smith novel with a fun Brazilian noir vibe. But underlying these comic noir elements is an eloquent meditation on the art and anxiety of translation, as well as a story about literature as a means of revelation and concealment."—Publishers Weekly (starred)
"A fast-paced, supremely engaging story of characters with good intentions who quickly get in over their heads . . . Novey's characters are hilariously impulsive, terribly misguided, hopelessly lost, relentlessly determined, and immediately sympathetic. An incisive meditation on the relationship between literature and life, a reflection on the cumulative result of everyday decisions, and a dazzling, truly memorable work of humor and heart."
—Booklist
"Stylish, absurd, sometimes romantic, and often very funny... Like a dream, the book is almost overwhelmingly vivid.. It's a tour de force. Delightful and original."—Kirkus
Library Journal
09/15/2015
Novey, who showed us she could write when her Exit, Civilian was selected for the 2011 National Poetry Series, offers a first novel with a writer at the core. Except that this writer, celebrated Brazilian Beatriz Yagoda, has vanished, having last been seen climbing into an almond tree with a suitcase, and her devoted American translator rushes southward to find out what happened.
Kirkus Reviews
2015-10-18
A famous novelist's disappearance upends the life of her American translator. Novey's surreal debut begins as a mystery: legendary Brazilian writer Beatriz Yagoda has inexplicably climbed into an almond tree with a cigar and a suitcase and has not been seen since. Upon receiving the news—is she aware, an unfamiliar emailer wants to know, that her author has been missing for five days?—translator Emma Neufeld puts her life in Pittsburgh on hold and hops a flight to Rio de Janeiro to join the search, much to the chagrin of her sweetly dull boyfriend. On the ground in Rio, the situation quickly begins to clarify: Beatriz Yagoda is not only a serious literary novelist, but also a serious online poker player who now owes an angry loan shark half a million dollars, or else. And so, together with Yagoda's adult children, Raquel (practical) and Marcus (overwhelmingly handsome), Emma embarks on a madcap chase to track down the missing author while fending off the increasingly impatient shark. Meanwhile, Yagoda's publisher, Roberto Rocha, burned out by a sea of lesser manuscripts and desperate for another one of hers, finds himself equally entangled: he doesn't know any more about her whereabouts than Emma and the rest, but he's been the one responding to her secret requests for cash, and—more importantly—he's the one with the means to pay off her debts. Stylish, absurd, sometimes romantic, and often very funny, the novel is as much about the writing process as it is about the high-stakes plot. And if it doesn't always add up to more than the sum of its parts—like a dream, the book is almost overwhelmingly vivid when you're in it, and the details dissipate quickly when you're not—taken piece by piece, it's a tour de force. Delightful and original.
