Moth; or how I came to be with you again : Or, How I Came to Be with You Again

"Thomas Heise has written a deeply moving account of loss, migration, and memory that blurs the line between poetry and prose" ( Montreal Review of Books ). The narrator in Thomas Heise's adventurous novel tries to fuse together his present and past, abandonment by his parents, childhood in an orphanage, and a strong sense of disconnection from his adult life. The story is written in columnar, densely lyrical sections, looping and vertiginously dropping into the speaker's past, across several cities in Europe. W.G. Sebald, Samuel Beckett, and Michelangelo Antonioni's films come to mind, especially L'Avventura and Red Desert . Heise's language is precise (dirigibles "no larger than a fennel seed") and his lush, unfolding sentences offer a great, gorgeous pleasure. Moth is a haunting, one-of-a-kind novel that will stay with the reader for a long, long time. "Neither memoir, poem, nor novel, Moth is somehow all three—an effusive ramble through the space of language and the language of memory . . . Heise seems capable of doing anything with words." — Publishers Weekly "It's impossible to convey in a few lines the enormous pleasures of this book—the beauty of the design, the incandescent prose, its rigor and intelligence. A deeply melancholic and moving work of art." —Carole Maso, author of The Room Lit by Roses "The silence between the words, between the pages is terrific." —Michael Martone, author of The Blue Guide to Indiana 'A deeply melancholic and moving work of art.'—Carole MasoEvery writer is a man or woman resuscitated, brought back for a little while before being dismissed. While I was hovering in bed barely asleep, my father would sneak in to check on me. Sometimes he came in the shape of a stranger, but his black eyes with a mark of sorrow never changed. When I was younger I could run so fast my shadow would fly off me. I would leave it behind in the city where I was born. There was no city, only my mother's arms. Dear grief, hermetic as a goat's skull. The future where you are, but how to get there except waiting another year.The narrator in Thomas Heise's adventurous novel tries to fuse together his present and past, abandonment by his parents, childhood in an orphanage, and a strong sense of disconnection from his adult life. The story is written in columnar, densely lyrical sections, looping and vertiginously dropping into the speaker's past, across several cities in Europe. W.G. Sebald, Samuel Beckett, and Michelangelo Antonioni's films come to mind, especially L'Avventura and Red Desert. Heise's language is precise (dirigibles'no larger than a fennel seed') and his lush, unfolding sentences offer a great, gorgeous pleasure. Moth is a haunting, one-of-a-kind novel that will stay with the reader for a long, long time.Thomas Heise is the author of Horror Vacui: Poems and Urban Underworlds: A Geography of Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture. He teaches at McGill University. ""A deeply melancholic and moving work of art.""℗اCarole Maso Every writer is a man or woman resuscitated, brought back for a little while before being dismissed. While I was hovering in bed barely asleep, my father would sneak in to check on me. Sometimes he came in the shape of a stranger, but his black eyes with a mark of sorrow never changed. When I was younger I could run so fast my shadow would fly off me. I would leave it behind in the city where I was born. There was no city, only my mother's arms. Dear grief, hermetic as a goat's skull. The future where you are, but how to ge Title Page; Dedication; Copyright; Epigraphs; A Note; Recollection; Oslo, Winter 2011; Berlin, Winter 2009; Berlin, Winter 2009; Berlin, Winter 2009; New York City (lyric); Recollection; Oslo, Winter 2011; Oslo, Winter 2011; Oslo, Spring 2010; Copenhagen, Spring 2010; Copenhagen, Fall 2010; Copenhagen, Winter 2010; New York City (lyric); Recollection; New York City (lyric); Oslo, Winter 2011; Prague, Summer 2010; Oslo, Summer 2010; Berlin, Summer 2011; Berlin, Late Fall 2011; Berlin, Late Fall 2011; Acknowledgments; About the Author. A young man probes the mystery of his past, including abandonment by his parents and a childhood in an orphanage.