The Vanishing Man is a collection of linked short stories about a man trying to come to terms with his past, a religious upbringing, in an ever-changing personal world that constantly throws him into self-doubt. He marries, finds happiness, only to go through a terrible divorce. He recovers, finds true love, marries, and goes through another terrible divorce and family death. He goes into therapy and tries to make sense of his failures and unhappiness by attempting to reclaim his past life. But this only partly succeeds. It’s not until the man discovers his true self that he is finally able to find hope, and his love of life again.

This is a book about faith, families, and the meaning of love, told from a distinctly masculine point of view. The men in these stories are often defined by what they don’t say, what they do instead, and how they react to each other between the lies and between the lines. They are often right about everything except themselves and it’s within this hazy, poetic world of self-doubt that the narrator of the stories lives and breathes.

Aaron Bushkowsky is a Vancouver-based playwright with publications and productions across several genres, including film, theatre, prose, poetry, and non-fiction. His first collection of short fiction, The Vanishing Man, was published by Cormorant Books in 2005, and his two collections of poetry, ed and mabel go to the moon and Mars Is For Poems, are available through Oolichan Books. Aaronâ??s plays, Strangers Among Us and The Waterhead and Other Plays have been published by Playwrights Canada Press. His plays have been nominated for Jessie Richardson Awards several times, winning twice. He teaches film and playwriting at several institutions, including Langara College, Studio 58, Kwantlen University, and Vancouver Film School. He also helps run Solo Collective Theatre, a professional mid-sized theatre in Vancouver that produces original plays by Western Canadian playwrights. Aaron is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada.

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“Bushkowsky … delights in the comic possibilities of misfiring language, in conversations that stumble comically as if the dancers have forgotten the dance.”

The Globe and Mail The Globe and Mail

“You can’t read Bushkowsky without experiencing a kind of refreshing weightlessness.”

The Vancouver Sun

“Bushkowsky is a keenly comic writer.”

Canadian Literature

“Bushkowsky the playwright connects with Bushkowsky the poet in these seventeen linked stories. At turns comic and touching, The Vanishing Man explores the complex bonds of family, marriage, and the faithful to the unbelieving, through characters fully human and half crazy.”

Caroline Adderson