Ways to Disappear

Starred review from October 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: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

November 1, 2015
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.

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October 15, 2015
In this short first novel, poet and translator Novey tells a fast-paced, supremely engaging story of characters with good intentions who quickly get in over their heads. When popular Brazilian author Beatriz Yagoda goes missing, her American translator, Emma, embarks on a poorly planned journey to find her. Easy enough, she thinks, only to find herself at odds with Yagoda's business-minded daughter, Raquel, and completely infatuated with Marcus, the author's son. The trio runs in circles in their search, until a tough-talking loan shark shows up and proves he means business when a second member of the Yagoda clan disappears. Novey's narration switches from Emma to the Yagodas to Beatriz's frantic publisher and is interspersed by snippets of news reports, dictionary entries, and email exchanges between Emma and her increasingly suspicious life partner back home in Pittsburgh. 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

September 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.

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