For today's post, NYS Writers Institute Director Paul Grondahl interviews Elizabeth Brundage, author of the recently published novel The Vanishing Point.
The Wall Street Journal called The Vanishing Point “a gripping literary thriller” and Publishers Weekly praised the novel as a “dark-toned mystery...an engrossing story about a love triangle involving three photographers.” In a starred review, Booklist called The Vanishing Point “an ambitious, literary novel distinguished by its characterizations, its pervasive air of melancholy, and its beautiful style.”
Elizabeth's previous novel, All Things Cease to Appear, which was named one of the best mysteries of 2016 by The Wall Street Journal, is the basis for a new feature film on Netflix, "Things Heard & Seen" starring Amanda Seyfried, James Norton and F. Murray Abraham. Elle magazine called it a “spine-tingling horror story.”
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a James Michener Award, Elizabeth attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, served as a visiting writer-in-residence at Skidmore College, and led a writing workshop at our Albany Book Festival.
Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Witness, New Letters, Greensboro Review and elsewhere. She has taught at several colleges and universities and lives with her family in Albany, New York.
We're proud to support local, independent booksellers. You can purchase The Vanishing Point at The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: https://www.bhny.com/book/9780316430371
About The Vanishing Point
At Rye Adler’s funeral, they didn’t bury his body – or the rivalry of his closest enemy. A gripping literary thriller by the author of the “wrenching and exhilarating” All Things Cease to Appear (Wall Street Journal).
Julian Ladd and Rye Adler cross paths as photography students in the exclusive Brodsky Workshop. When Rye needs a roommate, Julian moves in, and a quiet, compulsive envy takes root, assuring, at least in his own mind, that he will never achieve Rye’s certain success. Both men are fascinated with their beautiful and talented classmate, Magda, whose captivating images of her Polish neighborhood set her apart, and each will come to know her intimately – a woman neither can possess and only one can love.
Twenty years later, long after their paths diverge, Rye is at the top of his field, famous for his photographs of celebrities and far removed from the downtrodden and disenfranchised subjects who’d secured his reputation as the eye of his generation. When Magda reenters his life, asking for help only he can give, Rye finds himself in a broken landscape of street people and addicts, forcing him to reckon with the artist he once was, until his search for a missing boy becomes his own desperate fight to survive.
Months later, when Julian discovers Rye’s obituary, the paper makes it sound like a suicide. Despite himself, Julian attends the funeral, where there is no casket and no body. This sudden reentry into a world he thought he left behind forces Julian to question not only Rye’s death, but the very foundations of his life.
In this eerie and evocative novel, Elizabeth Brundage establishes herself as one of the premiere authors of literary fiction at work today.
"In this dark-toned mystery, Brundage develops an engrossing story about a love triangle involving three photographers. . . . The first half of the novel brilliantly dissects the competitive and erotic entanglements that mark the characters, and Brundage is particularly good at using photographic theory to describe how each sees the world."—Publishers Weekly
Learn more about Elizabeth Brundage at her website: https://elizabethbrundage.com/
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