The Last Vanishing Man and Other Stories

Magic stops. Men vanish. Worlds end. Life goes on.

The stories in The Last Vanishing Man begin with the end of the world, as a narrator seeks to imagine how the actions of an American terrorist ripple through his family. American violence and masculinity are topics that weave through these stories, as characters of various genders and sexualities get scarred by the wounds of manhood. Despite the recurring themes, the stories are diverse in focus and tone. Hard-edged realism coexists with ghost stories and weird tales; the lyrical tragedy of "A Suicide Gun" contrasts with the wild, filthy, absurdist romp that is "The Ballad of Jimmy and Myra", a murder ballad that might be a lost Weird Al song for a John Waters movie. The collection concludes with an expatriate American living in the melting tundra of Siberia, seeking liberation from the forces that deranged his life, the same forces that shaped and warped the lives of all the other characters in the book.

The Last Vanishing Man is organized in four sections. The first section tells tales of people seeking to make sense of history and their place in it, whether it's the history of a queer sanctuary in Canada or the unfulfilled dreams of the Warhol star Candy Darling. The second section introduces characters who are each on a quest to understand someone who is gone, vanished into memory or worlds beyond, with their stories closer to myth than history. In the third section, lonely men seek meaning in a world where they have lost their way. Their quests are philosophical, even spiritual, as they wander toward something greater than their transient desires.

The final section breaks the book open with extremes: extremes of feeling, extremes of strangeness, extremes of horror. The fiercely disturbing story "Patrimony" portrays a post-apocalypse where male power turns the procreation of humanity into torture. "On the Government of the Living" is also a post-apocalyptic story, featuring children and humanity, but is more a haunting parable than horror, more Samuel Beckett than Clive Barker.

The Last Vanishing Man is a book for readers seeking more than familiar genre conventions, readers looking for stories that challenge, unsettle, surprise, and sing. These stories are acutely aware of the world's sufferings, featuring characters tormented by unfulfilled desires and unfathomable violence. Yet, they are also stories of compassion, community, humour, and infinite possibilities beyond the prison of the self.