The Vanishing ACT - by Eoin Connolly (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A whimsical, spiraling tragicomedy following a lonely copywriter with a talking cat as he makes the climate anxiety-fueled decision to disappear--first from the Internet and then more radically and completely

Colm is socially inept, anxious, and working a dead-end job. He spends his free time scrolling his phone, thinking about climate catastrophe, and sharing decadent takeout meals with his inexplicably verbal cat, Gazdanov. One night, a video appears that disrupts the course of his monotonous life: the foreign minister of Tuvalu is giving a press conference knee-deep in ocean water, explaining that his island nation will be underwater in the next thirty years. Colm is distraught and consumed by guilt. The next day, a mysterious environmental activist appears in his office. Together, they decide that Colm should vanish, in hopes of doing his small part to lessen the burden on our overcrowded planet.

What starts as an intense digital cleanse turns more extreme as Colm gets rid of his possessions, burns his passport, and even begins to starve himself. His increasingly unhinged behavior comes to a head when his beloved cat disappears, and he sets out on a search that ends in a series of devastating revelations.

Part apocalyptic satire, part cri de coeur for our overwhelmed nervous systems, The Vanishing Act is a moving, resonant, and ultimately uplifting chronicle of the modern human condition.

Review Quotes

"The Vanishing Act is a darkly funny and deceptively tender chronicle of one man's drastic efforts to decrease his environmental footprint. Colm is the most beguiling and indelible narrator I've encountered in some time. I devoured this novel in a day and have been thinking about it ever since." --Isabel Kaplan, national bestselling author of NSFW

About the Author

EOIN CONNOLLY is an Irish-American writer based in Lisbon. His short stories have been published in Oyster River Pages, The Cimarron Review, and The Red Rock Review, BOMB Magazine and Alaska Quarterly. The Vanishing Act is his debut novel.