I’ve been on a frantic tear for the right novel for weeks. I’ve got Alice Munro, Dan Chaon, reading non-fiction and mysteries, but have been struggling to find the right novel. Yesterday, at Northshire Books in Manchester, Vt, I was signing books and turned around – isn’t this the way life works? – and was looking right at “The Art of Disappearing,” a first novel by Ivy Pochoda and a brilliant one. I am not quite finished, so will wait to write about it more, but I have to say it is just a magical and gorgeously written and evocative book. I love the premise – Mel Snow, who works in textiles, runs across a troubled magician named Toby Warring. They get married in Las Vegas,  and Toby has an awful crisis in his magician work, and the story rockets off from there.

This is one of those books I cannot put down, and which entered my heart and my dreams. It is difficult finding fiction to read that isn’t, simply put, just depressing and grim. I think we all know life is sometimes grim, and I personally don’t feel as if I need to spend $25 to be reminded of it. “The Art of Disappearing” is by no means upbeat – it is deliciously brooding and menacing sometimes. But Pochola, a Harvard grad and U.S. Squash Champion (how odd that sounds) has just got the gift. The book is right out of the heart.

I can’t wait for the second book, and I haven’t nearly finished her first. This is a wonderful accomplishment, and the prose just nibbles on your ear and lifts you along.