1. If you had to name the best-fit genre for this book, what would you choose? Why?

2. Emma feels a special connection or loyalty to Beatriz. How do you think Emma conceives of their relationship as writer/translator? As women? As artists?

3. The prose of Ways to Disappear is broken into with gossip news, radio bulletins, and e-mails. What do you think this adds to (or takes away from) the novel, as opposed to if it had been told straight up?

4. "To leave a person capable of such meticulous devotion was difficult." Are there similarities between the ways that both Emma and Beatriz disappear from their lives? Differences?

5. The men in this novel play such interesting, if not secondary, roles: editor, boyfriend, brother, villain. Discuss the ways the novel explores masculinity, especially considering the subject of their strife and action is a famous woman.

6. Idra Novey has a background as a poet and a translator – is there anywhere in the novel that her background especially shines through? What does it do to the plot or the prose?

7. The characters in Ways to Disappear live in a Brazil that is different from the glossy travel brochures of Rio de Janeiro– with kidnappers and loan sharks, among other frightening characters. What effect did breaking down the sparkling "tourist haven" image of Brazil have on the telling of the story?

8. Heller McAlpin’s NPR review says "Ways to Disappear explores the meaning behind a writer's words — the way they can both hide and reveal deep truths." What moments of this book are particular evidence of this? How?