In The Slow Vanishing, Maureen Sherbondy looks at our lives through a lens of fantasy and wisdom, then tells our stories in compelling and magical ways. Thought-provoking, entertaining, troubling, and true, these tales will have you nodding your head in recognition, eager to read more.

Off-beat stories with unexpected endings. Life’s ordinary problems intruded on by the bizarre. The Slow Vanishing has a mesmerizing, magical effect.

Maureen Sherbondy’s new book of short stories, The Slow Vanishing, showcases the work of an unfailingly entertaining writer with a gift for dark humor and lots of tricks up her sleeve, but always in the service of deepening the reader’s understanding of the endless variations of human desperation that often haunt the most conventional of lives. Her adept use of the bizarre descriptive detail and quirky conversational tidbit enables her to create memorable characters that we end up rooting for, often within a very few pages, or even paragraphs, in the case of her shorter pieces, no matter how hapless their lot. These stories crackle with odd energy, and often leave the reader breathless with surprise, horrified and laughing at the same time.