Distiller: Doni Faber
Rating: 4/5 Stars
One Rainy Day in May Into the Forest Honeysuckle and Pain
(The Familiar #1) (The Familiar #2) (The Familiar #3)
May 12, 2015 October 27, 2015 June 14, 2016
(839 pages) (816 pages) (843 pages)
by Mark Z. Danielewski
Pantheon Books
Mark Z. Danielewski's first novel,
House of Leaves, was so successful at being creepy that I
didn't make it through the whole thing. But I was impressed with his
style, so when I found three volumes of a new book, The Familiar,
I was intrigued. Then I found out he is planning for it to be 27
volumes long! (with 9 volumes already written.)
Rather tongue-in-cheek, Mark has
described the plot as being about a girl getting a cat and the cat
getting hungry (and probably would describe the third as the cat
getting angry.) Because after all, when one has written ~2400 pages,
what else does one have to say about it? It is definitely a
compelling relationship between a cat and a girl, who can't leave his
presence without feeling like she's on fire. She and the cat are so
in sync, that whatever the cat experiences, so does the girl. But
there's a whole lot more going on.
Some computer developers have created
something called, "The Orb," which can scry people and find
aberrations. Xanther turns out to be the most interesting aberration of them all. But the
people who are involved with this are leaving murders in their wake.
There is also a Narrative Construct (distinct from the author), sometimes experiencing what its
characters are experiencing and sometimes blocked. This NarCon can
perhaps help explain why Xanther is an aberration?
What initially drew me to this book--
the intertwining of many lives from many different areas-- I found
off-putting when trying to read. Rather than read it linearly, I
followed the main thread through three volumes and then went back to
pick up the remaining threads. (This was easy enough to do, since
each character was color-coded, though I was initially thrown off by
Xanther's parents each having their own color-coding.) When I tried
to read it linearly, the shorter pieces were too difficult to follow.
Piecing it together like I did, felt rather like the Rubix cube
Xanther would idly play with during her sessions with a therapist.
Even so, most of the other threads were not nearly as engaging or as
accessible as Xanther and her cat.
Who would I recommend this book to? It
definitely isn't for everyone. The length alone contributes to that.
(Though it's a quicker read than you might expect. Some of the font
and spacing is quite large.) But it is also very avant garde. So if
you're not interested in playing with the novel and typology as a
medium, this probably isn't for you. Danielewski said in an interview
that House of Leaves was supposed to play with the boundaries
of a movie, Only Revolutions with music, and The Familiar
with a television series. I found The Familiar more
accessible than Only
Revolutions. (I can't
compare with House of
Leaves since I didn't
make it through it.)
0 comments:
Post a Comment