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A review by monty_reads
The Familiar, Volume 2: Into the Forest by Mark Z. Danielewski
3.0
If you’ve never read anything by Mark Z. Danielewski before, I’ll tell you two things:
1) You’ve gotta be willing to live in a constant state of disequilibrium. You will either not fully understand what you’re reading or else you’ll fully understand it & be unsettled by it. There’s very little in between.
2) You have to put in the work. You don’t read Danielewski casually. He’s going to exercise your gray matter in ways it probably hasn’t been exercised in a while (& I say this as a Professional Thinky Guy).
A third thing – separate from, but a consequence of, the first two items – is that there’s no satisfactory way to summarize a Danielewski book & render it appealing to anyone.
So what can I tell you?
Some bullets:
This is the second volume of a series the author intends to be 27 (!) volumes long.
Each volume, including this one, will be 880 pages & 30 chapters long.
It features nine storylines, some of which currently interlock, some of which don’t, some of which you just KNOW will interlock eventually.
These stories are kept distinctive through the use of specific individual fonts.
Among the nine interlocking stories you’ll find the following:
Xanther, a young epileptic girl who takes care of a small cat that looks very young but is actually very old & which may have healing properties.
A group of outlaws possessing a mysterious Orb while on the run from the government.
A Los Angeles detective, a Mexican-American gang member, & a Singaporean addict, all of whom are involved in a plot about drugs being distributed by balloon.
A group called the Narcons who may be extraterrestrial or possibly some sort of artificial intelligence or maybe neither of the above but who definitely provide a running commentary on all nine plotlines.
And then there are some plotlines I’m still waiting to reveal themselves, like the Armenian taxi driver or Xanther’s mother, whose story mainly revolves around trying to get her graduate thesis approved.
As always, the breadth of Danielewski’s imagination & experimentation is astounding. But I’m not going to hang around forever. I’m on board for at least one more volume, but I’m soon going to need more instant gratification.
1) You’ve gotta be willing to live in a constant state of disequilibrium. You will either not fully understand what you’re reading or else you’ll fully understand it & be unsettled by it. There’s very little in between.
2) You have to put in the work. You don’t read Danielewski casually. He’s going to exercise your gray matter in ways it probably hasn’t been exercised in a while (& I say this as a Professional Thinky Guy).
A third thing – separate from, but a consequence of, the first two items – is that there’s no satisfactory way to summarize a Danielewski book & render it appealing to anyone.
So what can I tell you?
Some bullets:
This is the second volume of a series the author intends to be 27 (!) volumes long.
Each volume, including this one, will be 880 pages & 30 chapters long.
It features nine storylines, some of which currently interlock, some of which don’t, some of which you just KNOW will interlock eventually.
These stories are kept distinctive through the use of specific individual fonts.
Among the nine interlocking stories you’ll find the following:
Xanther, a young epileptic girl who takes care of a small cat that looks very young but is actually very old & which may have healing properties.
A group of outlaws possessing a mysterious Orb while on the run from the government.
A Los Angeles detective, a Mexican-American gang member, & a Singaporean addict, all of whom are involved in a plot about drugs being distributed by balloon.
A group called the Narcons who may be extraterrestrial or possibly some sort of artificial intelligence or maybe neither of the above but who definitely provide a running commentary on all nine plotlines.
And then there are some plotlines I’m still waiting to reveal themselves, like the Armenian taxi driver or Xanther’s mother, whose story mainly revolves around trying to get her graduate thesis approved.
As always, the breadth of Danielewski’s imagination & experimentation is astounding. But I’m not going to hang around forever. I’m on board for at least one more volume, but I’m soon going to need more instant gratification.