What Disappears

“In What Disappears, Barbara Quick spreads before the reader a banquet of secrets, jealousy, betrayal, genius, high fashion, loss, tragedy and poignant regrets peppered with fascinating historical details and cameo appearances by some of the most famous ballerinas, writers, and artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A cinematic novel, which cuts between Russia and Paris, past and future, fear and desire, What Disappears has a rich plot filled with enough reversals, revelations, and unexpected twists to keep readers turning its pages long into the night.”
–Mary Mackey, New York Times bestselling author of A Grand Passion

“Gorgeously written and daring in scope of drama from the poverty and pogroms of Russia to the fraught, exquisite world of divine fashion and the Ballets Russes of Paris 1909, What Disappears follows the poignant story of identical twins separated at nine months in a world that is changing rapidly. One sister clings to her difficult life as a dancer; the other who has lost both her great loves, struggles on with her three daughters. Between breathtaking scenes of betrayal, danger and perfect love found and lost, little is as we expect it as the twins reunite in Paris. One sister is the quiet steadfast heart of this story and the other its restless discontent. Some dreams shatter, and other come true in a way you never could have expected. What Disappears is a book you will find hard to put down and impossible to forget.”
–Stephanie Cowell, author of Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet and Marrying Mozart, American Book Award recipient

“What Disappears is a tour de force. With a dancer’s grace, agility and subtlety, Barbara Quick creates indelible scenes that unfold as her characters, both famous and fictional, discover the fragility of their deepest core values. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to keep up with my own racing mind! How do we use the artistic self to cover or costume or hide? In this author’s hands, twin-hood becomes a metaphor for the conflict between a stage persona and an offstage one. I shivered with recognition at her portrayal of the male ego, presumption, oblivion and rational thought being clouded by carnal or artistic desires. Any dancer or athlete will resonate with these characters’ use of physical work to staunch or avoid the excruciating reality of emotional pain. The historic figures in the book— Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Pavlova, Karsavina, and titans of the fashion world— become ever more real through the way Quick illustrates the turmoil and self-doubt of the artistic mind, regardless of the artist’s fame. Quick reveals symbolism threaded through these characters’ lives that sheds light on our own in the way only great literature can do. Are we all performing our way through life, 'running from whatever demons we carry around inside us… straight into the arms of death'? By the end of this masterful work, we can indeed understand that when our inner and outer selves reconcile, what disappears is in fact what remains.”
—Gavin Larsen, author of Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life

“Barbara Quick is at the height of her powers in her newest novel, an epic narrative of the ballet world, European history and high fashion. Her characters are so real—so vital—they seem to say, 'Come toward us and see what’s inside!' And we do, following them with fascination one by one. The plot crosses back and forth across continents and time to braid an intergenerational story with unflagging momentum and gripping emotional appeal. Like her 2007 novel Vivaldi’s Virgins, What Disappears sings with musical complexity and vivid sensuality.”
—Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate

“In this well-researched and exquisite novel of artistic innovation during the first decades of the twentieth century, Barbara Quick deftly evokes a world rushing headlong into modernity. Through the eyes of two sensitive and artistic Russian sisters we experience the devastating pogroms of Russia and the dazzling Paris of the Ballets Russes, high fashion, and literature, meeting luminaries such as Ninjinski, Diaghilev, Paul Poiret, Colette, and others along the way. This vibrant novel of loss, ambition, and destiny will resonate long after you finish reading it.”
–Mitchell Kaplan, award-winning author of Into the Unbounded Night and Rhapsody

“What Disappears is an ambitious work populated with such larger-than-life personalities as the prima Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, the superhuman Polish ballet star Vaslav Nijinsky, the groundbreaking choreographer Sergei Diaghelev, the innovative French fashion designer Paul Poiret who released women from corsets but then put them in his hobble skirts…Barbara Quick is exceptionally agile at blending real life events with her fiction. [W]ith these characters alone and the events around them, [she] has seeded her novel for a spectacular cinematic rendering.”
—Karren Alenier

March 8: Radio interview with Suzanne M. Lang on “A Novel Idea” for Sonoma County NPR affiliate station KRCB (distributed as a podcast by NPR).

April or May: Forthcoming article by the author in Dance International Magazine on how she did her research for What Disappears. This will also be distributed over the DanceNet social media network.

Targeted ad campaign/s on Bookbub.com (budget to be determined).

Exposure on NetGalley.

April (exact date TBA): Long-form interview (already completed) with the author by Martha Ann Toll for the Washington Independent Review of Books.

April or May: Long-form illustrated feature article about the author and her violist- winemaker husband in the Towns section of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the largest circulation newspaper in California's North Bay. Comes in conjunction with a special book-launch edition of Roden Wines Pinot gris, which incorporates elements of the beautiful cover art for What Disappears into the label.

Date to be announced: Profile of the author by Elise Marie Collins for The Bookwoman, the newsletter of the National Women’s Book Association.

March-May: The author will send out a chatty, illustrated, bi-weekly newsletter update to all her email contacts, most likely via MailChimp.

Mid-May: Featured interview on Grace Cavalieri’s long-running podcast from the Library of Congress, “The Poet and the Poem,” voted top in the nation for ENTERTAINMENT IN MEDIA by the National Commission on Working Women. Cavalieri has interviewed Barbara Quick three times before on the program in conjunction with two of her novels (the 12-times translated international favorite, Vivaldi’s Virgins, and her YA title, A Golden Web); and her debut poetry chapbook, The Light on Sifnos, winner of the 2020 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize.

Live bookstore launch at Book Passage in Corte Madera, one of California’s premier independent bookstores, on Saturday, May 28th, at 4:00. Wine and cake will be served!

Virtual event at the end of May at Malaprops Bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina, featuring Barbara Quick in conversation with Gavin Larsen, author of the New York Times touted memoir, Being a Ballerina.

Zoom and/or live event in May with Gavin Larsen co-interviewing the author with Pod-de-Deux podcast host Clara Peterson, for the New York City Chapter of the Historical Novel Society.

Live and/or virtual bookstore events at:
Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon
Elliott Bay Books in Seattle
Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore in Berkeley
Kepler’s Books in Palo Alto
Bookshop Santa Cruz
Barnes & Noble (Manhattan)
Copperfield’s in Healdsburg

Live bookstore events during summer and/or fall 2022 in Southern California, New York, New England, Nashville, Washington, D.C., and Annapolis, MD.

In the works:

Library events (TBA) in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Westport, CT.

A special event in conjunction with the the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library and/or the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU.

A return appearance as a featured alumni author for the “Living Writers Program” at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Guest lectures and/or seminars at UCSC and other University of California campuses, as well as at other universities, colleges, and writing festivals in the West (including Alaska), where the author has been featured in the past.

Appearance as a featured author at the Portland (Oregon) Book Festival, November 2022.

Readings and signings at San Francisco Litquake and Litcrawl, October 7-23, 2022.

An invitation to be one of the featured authors in March 2023 at Literary Women: A Festival of Women Authors, in Long Beach, California. The author was a speaker there after the publication of her Discover-Award-winning first novel, Northern Edge.