The Moth for the Star - by James Reich (Paperback)

About the Book

"At once a gripping metaphysical mystery of Depression-era New York and a tender ode to our dying future, James Reich's The Moth for the Star is by turns horrifying and poignant, coldly thrilling and richly evocative. Charles Varnas is a murderer who cannot recall his victim. His cool, androgynous conspirator Campbell may hold the secret. Haunted and dissolute, they struggle to come to terms with the psychic weight of their crime. With a control of language and rhythm few can match, Reich transports his readers from the streets of Cairo to the canals of Venice, from the heights of Manhattan's Chrysler Building to the shadow of the Sphinx."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

At once a gripping metaphysical mystery of Depression-era New York and a tender ode to our dying future, James Reich's The Moth for the Star is by turns horrifying and poignant, coldly thrilling and richly evocative. Charles Varnas is a murderer who cannot recall his victim. His cool, androgynous conspirator Campbell may hold the secret. Haunted and dissolute, they struggle to come to terms with the psychic weight of their crime. With a control of language and rhythm few can match, Reich transports his readers from the streets of Cairo to the canals of Venice, from the heights of Manhattan's Chrysler Building to the shadow of the Sphinx. The Moth for the Star is a dark, sprawling romance, riddled with paranormal drama, a singular work destined to remain with you long after reading.

Review Quotes

"An interrogation of the nature of evil set against the backdrop of a thrilling murder mystery, The Moth for the Star's nuanced evocations of the beautiful and the damned accumulate in a terrifyingly relevant fiction, one that will keep you guessing to the last page and beyond."

-Jonathan Evison, author of Small World

"In The Moth for the Star, James Reich grips the reader from the first page and doesn't let go. Across sweeping landscapes and eras, from the 1929 market crash to post-apocalyptic environmental ruin, Reich builds a narrative storm that is menacing, inventive, and beautifully blade-sharp."

-Anne Valente, author of Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

"Hypnotic, brooding, and ultimately spellbinding, The Moth for the Star is a marvel of psychological suspense rendered in prose as polished and shining as the novel's twin protagonists, who slice through space and time with the cold detachment of a steel razor."

-Chuck Greaves, author of The Chimera Club

"Every sentence on fire, James Reich's cosmopolitan orphic novel alchemizes mystery tropes into an existential exploration of uncertainty and unlearning that leaves time, space, love, yesterday, and tomorrow as energetically unsettled as a symphony of quantum strings."

-Lance Olsen, author of Always Crashing in the Same Car: A Novel After David Bowie

"A Depression-era murder ballad as sung by a high modernist, an amnesiac's love story as told by the Devil, The Moth for the Star is above all a sentence-by-sentence pleasure of maximalist prose used to hypnotically readable effect. Stunning and strange, Reich's latest whisks you up with the serious power of language into a compelling and utterly memorable world."

-Constance E. Squires, author of Hit Your Brights and Along the Watchtower

"The Moth for the Star is a triumph. It evokes the Depression era with a stylized, enervated elegance, and argues that the past is another planet: exotic, alien and inhospitable. The exquisite writing shines with diamond-cut brilliance, and the cumulative effect is uncanny, revealing a damaged world where reality has been fatally upended."

-Simon Sellars, author of Applied Ballardianism: Memoir From a Parallel Universe and Code Beast