The Vanishing ACT

About this book

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