Scope and Contents Amazon.com: NATIONAL BEST SELLER From the author of the international best seller House of Leaves and National Book Award-nominated Only Revolutions comes a monumental new novel as dazzling as it is riveting. The Familiar (Volume 1) ranges from Mexico to Southeast Asia, from Venice, Italy, to Venice, California, with nine lives hanging in the balance, each called upon to make a terrifying choice. They include a therapist-in-training grappling with daughters as demanding as her patients; an ambitious East L.A. gang member contracted for violence; two scientists in Marfa, Texas, on the run from an organization powerful beyond imagining; plus a recovering addict in Singapore summoned at midnight by a desperate billionaire; and a programmer near Silicon Beach whose game engine might unleash consequences far exceeding the entertainment he intends. At the very heart, though, is a twelve-year-old girl named Xanther who one rainy day in May sets out with her father to get a dog, only to...

Scope and Contents Lydia Millet Los Angeles Times review: "Mark Z. Danielewski's newest novel, reportedly the first volume of many, is an 880-page tome that, through some curious printer's alchemy, feels even heavier than even this surfeit of pages would seem to warrant "” as though a leaden object had been secreted craftily within its spine. And that wouldn't shock, for "The Familiar: Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May" is a sprawling postmodern monument to semantic encryption, part paean and part parody, whose action takes place over the course of a day.Danielewski is known for his unwavering commitment to so-called experimental fiction "” that is, nonlinear or difficult fiction "” and has had a significant following since his acclaimed first novel, "House of Leaves," was published in 2000. "The Familiar" will be a delight to fans of "Leaves" for its characteristically elaborate, even baroque physical production as well as its cryptogrammatic content: This, like all of Danielewski's work, is a verbal...

Scope and Contents This is the first edition signed one week after publication.Lydia Millet Los Angeles Times review: "Mark Z. Danielewski's newest novel, reportedly the first volume of many, is an 880-page tome that, through some curious printer's alchemy, feels even heavier than even this surfeit of pages would seem to warrant "” as though a leaden object had been secreted craftily within its spine. And that wouldn't shock, for "The Familiar: Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May" is a sprawling postmodern monument to semantic encryption, part paean and part parody, whose action takes place over the course of a day.Danielewski is known for his unwavering commitment to so-called experimental fiction "” that is, nonlinear or difficult fiction "” and has had a significant following since his acclaimed first novel, "House of Leaves," was published in 2000. "The Familiar" will be a delight to fans of "Leaves" for its characteristically elaborate, even baroque physical production as well as its cryptogrammatic...

Scope and Contents

This is the first volume of an announced 27 volumes that Dnaielewski proposes to produce.The plot takes place on a single rainy day and follows the story of a girl named Xanther.The plot ranges in time, in place and with characters in bewildering, creative typography, design, language and poetry. As Tom LeClair wrote in his New York Times Book Review,"To reinforce the exoticism of his material Danielewski invents a nearly opaque pidgen English, interspersed with Russian and Chinese printed characters..two other story lines...Los Angeles subcultures." John Williams adds in his review, "Danielewski's novels are brillintly produced, with text that curves away from the page margins, piles on itself until it becomes unintelligible blocks, and changes colores to represent different charctrers or themes." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.