Thin Rising Vapors

Ezra Stern hasnt seen his best friend from childhood and college in the six years since Abel suddenly quit a successful career in New York to live alone in a cabin in the Maine woods. In late November, Ezra receives a letter from an estate lawyer telling him that Abel has died and that he has inherited the deceaseds property in the lakeside town of Casco. That evening, as the first blizzard of the year approaches, Ezra leaves the city for Abels house. Over the next seven days, Ezra searches to understand his friends reclusive life and mysterious death by poring compulsively over Abels voluminous posthumous papers, typed on an old Remington manual. As Ezra becomes increasingly immersed in Abels writings, the coherence of the story of Abels life builds and disintegrates in successive swells. Ezra discovers in the center of what had been familiar something irremediably alien, and in the heart of that total othernessthe unbearably intimate.

About the Author :
Seth Rogoff was born in Portland, Maine in 1976. He has translated several works by Franz Kafka, including T he Castle (2007). He is currently working on a collection of fictional lectures and a nonfiction book on the politics of dream interpretation. He has been a creative writing Fulbright Fellow in Berlin, where he lived for ten years. Since 2015, he has lived with his wife Jana and their two children in Prague.

Review :
On the surface, Thin Rising Vapors is a meditation on the vicissitudes of friendship, but look more closely and youll see the novels true and remarkable nature begin to emerge. For Thin Rising Vapors is nothing short of a love letter from author to reader, and in Seth Rogoffs capable, expert hands youll want to turn every page to find out what happens next until there arent any pages left to turn. In the vein of the audacious and tragic Into the Wild and with touches of the heartfelt mystery of Snow Falling on Cedars, Rogoff drops the reader in the middle of a snowy wood and then, like any good storyteller, slowly unravels how we came to be there and how the hell were going to escape. David Samuel Levinson, author of Tell Me How This Ends Well Thin Rising Vapors is a wildly gripping meditation on friendship, memory, storytelling, and the elastic fluidity of time. Its world is so vivid and its characters relationships so extraordinarily real that when I reached the final page, I was shocked to look up and find myself in my own (sunny, humid) home, rather than surrounded by snow and curled up by a fire in Seth Rogoffs Casco, Maine. Allison Lynn, author of The Exiles and Now You See It Thin Rising Vapors is an electrifying novelpsychologically astute and richly textured, with an utterly distinctive voice. In the most seemingly effortless way, this novel manages to be a transfixing page-turner; a complex and fascinating meditation on friendship, trust and truth; and a searing look at the power of storytelling. Seth Rogoff is a thrillingly talented writer. Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans Eerie, suspenseful and psychologically astute, reminiscent of Brian Evenson, Kelly Link, Shirley Jacksoneven Kafka himselfSeth Rogoffs Thin Rising Vapors will keep you gripped from the first page. Daniel Torday, author of The Last Flight of Poxl West Not all of the questions raised by Thin Rising Vapors, either factual or thematic, are answered in the text. Nevertheless, the novels conclusion proves highly satisfactory. Rogoff displays a notable gift for recognizing what to share and what to withhold, and precisely when in the narrative to do eachand therein lies the novels stirring magic. As Abel writes in one of his journal entries, Too many perfectly fine moments are ruined by giving away the game. The unknown often needs to linger, like a fine spirit on the lips. Jacob M. Appel in The Collagist [An] important question that Thin Rising Vapors poses is that of the relationship between the author and the interpreter. In Rogoffs novel it seems at first that Ezra is in charge of his narrative. He not only seems to control his actions, but he also decides what pieces of Abels papers are to be shown to the reader. But as the story proceeds, Abels voice grows more and more independent. His papers begin to occupy more and more pages in the book. Finally, it seems that Abel almost starts competing with Ezra for the role of the leading narrator. Soon his writings seem to be commenting on Ezras commentary. At the same time Ezra begins to think about his life in light of what he reads. He also begins to feel that he is losing control. Rogoffs strategy in portraying Abels solitary drama is to show it as the conflict between dimensions that are fundamentally at odds with each other: theory and practice, past and present, biology and soul. Anton Romanenko in Body