Atonement (Boeke Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, ..., winner)

Atonement is a 2001 novel by one of Britain's most highly regarded writers Ian McEwan (1948- ). It is published in 2001 and won the 2002 Boeke Prize, the 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award, the 2002 WH Smith Literary Award, and the 2004 Santiago Prize.

Plot Summary [1]

In the hot summer of 1935, 13-year-old Briony Tallis is already an ambitious writer. She has written a play for her older brother, Leon, who is supposed to arrive later in the day. The characters are to be played by her cousins, 15-year-old Lola and the nine-year-old twins Jackson and Pierrot. Briony's sister, Cecilia, has returned home from Girton College, Cambridge, and is trying to sort out her confused feelings toward her childhood friend, the housekeeper's son Robbie Turner, who is also home from Cambridge for the summer. His studies were financed by her father, Jack Tallis, and Robbie is now considering becoming a doctor, which would also be funded by Jack Tallis.
Cecilia wants to fill a vase with water at the fountain in front of the Tallis house. She meets Robbie and they start talking but the conversation quickly becomes awkward. When Robbie wants to help Cecilia with the vase, she remains stubborn, the vase breaks, and two pieces fall into the fountain. Cecilia strips to her underwear, jumps into the fountain and retrieves the fragments while Robbie only stares at her. Briony witnesses the ensuing moment of sexual tension from an upstairs bedroom and is confused as to its meaning.
Leon Tallis arrives with his friend, Paul Marshall. They meet Robbie on their way to the house, and Leon invites him to dinner. Cecilia is irritated at Robbie's coming, but does not know why he bothers her so much.
Meanwhile, Robbie wants to write a letter to Cecilia to apologize for his behavior at the fountain. He indicates that he also feels awkward around her, and, like her, does not know why. After finishing it, he unthinkingly writes another letter, using the word "cunt," suggesting his subconscious desires towards Cecilia. Although he then writes another version of it, the first version is accidentally delivered to Cecilia via Briony, who reads it. Briony consults her cousin Lola. Briony is then convinced that Robbie is a "sex maniac" and that she must "protect" her sister from him.
Upon reading Robbie's letter, Cecilia realizes her love for Robbie and they end up making love in the library. Briony interrupts them, and interprets their lovemaking as a sexual assault upon her sister.
During dinner, the twin cousins run away, leaving a letter. The dinner party divides into groups to go out searching for them. Robbie and Briony are the only ones who are left alone, as Robbie has to acknowledge later. In the dark, Briony comes across Lola being raped by an unknown attacker. Briony blames Robbie as the attacker. Lola, afraid and disturbed, lets Briony do the talking.
The police arrive to investigate, and when Robbie arrives with the rescued twins, he is arrested solely on the basis of Briony's testimony. Apart from Robbie's mother, only Cecilia believes in his innocence.

By the time World War II has started, Robbie has spent three years in prison. He is released on the condition of enlistment in the army. Cecilia has become a nurse. She cuts off all contact with her family because of the part they took in sending Robbie to jail. Robbie and Cecilia have only been in contact by letter, since she was not allowed to visit him in prison. Before Robbie has to go to war in France, they meet once for half an hour during Cecilia's lunch break. Their reunion starts awkwardly, but they share a kiss before leaving each other.
In France, the war is going badly and the army is retreating to Dunkirk. As the injured Robbie goes to the safe haven, he thinks about Cecilia and past events like teaching Briony how to swim and reflecting on Briony's possible reasons for accusing him. His single meeting with Cecilia is the memory that keeps him walking, his only aim is seeing her again. At the end, Robbie falls asleep in Dunkirk, one day before the evacuation.

Remorseful Briony has refused her place at Cambridge and instead is a trainee nurse in London. She has realized the full extent of her mistake, and now remembers it was Paul Marshall, Leon's friend, whom she saw raping Lola. Briony still writes, although she does not pursue it with the same recklessness as she did as a child.
Briony is called to the bedside of Luc, a young, fatally wounded French soldier. She consoles him in his last moments by speaking with him in her school French, and he mistakes her for an English girl whom his mother wanted him to marry. Just before his death, Luc asks "Do you love me?", to which Briony answers "Yes," not only because "no other answer was possible" but also because "for the moment, she did. He was a lovely boy far away from his family and about to die." Afterward, Briony daydreams about the life she might have had if she had married Luc and gone to live with him and his family.
Briony attends the wedding of her cousin Lola and Paul Marshall before finally visiting Cecilia. Robbie is on leave from the army and Briony meets him unexpectedly at her sister's. They both refuse to forgive Briony, who nonetheless tells them she will try and put things right. She promises to begin the legal procedures needed to exonerate Robbie, even though Paul Marshall will never be held responsible for his crime because of his marriage to Lola, the victim.

The fourth section, titled "London 1999", is written from Briony's perspective. She is a successful novelist at the age of 77 and dying of vascular dementia.
It is revealed that Briony is the author of the preceding sections of the novel. Although Cecilia and Robbie are reunited in Briony's novel, they were not in reality. Robbie Turner died of septicaemia caused by his injury on the beaches of Dunkirk and Cecilia was killed by the bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains above Balham Underground station. The truth is that Cecilia and Robbie never saw each other again after their half-hour meeting. Although the detail concerning Lola's marriage to Paul Marshall is true, Briony never visited Cecilia to make amends.
Briony explains why she decided to change real events and unite Cecilia and Robbie in her novel, although it was not her intention in her many previous drafts. She did not see what purpose it would serve if she told the readers the pitiless truth. She reasons that they could not draw any sense of hope or satisfaction from it. But above all, she wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia their happiness by being together. Since they could not have the time together they so much longed for in reality, Briony wanted to give it to them at least in her novel.

[1] Wikipedia.org: Atonement

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The Book Thief (Boeke Prize, Daniel Elliott Peace Award, ... winner)

The Book Thief is a novel by Australian author Markus Zusak (1975- ), published in 2005 and won Commonwealth Writers Prize, Horn Book Fanfare, Kirkus Reviews Editor Choice Award, School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, Daniel Elliott Peace Award, Publishers Weekly Best Children Book of the Year, Booklist ChildrenEditors' Choice and Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book in 2006, Boeke Prize, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Michael L. Printz Honor Book and Book Sense Book of the Year in 2007, and Pacific Northwest Young Readers Choice Master List in 2009 [1].

Plot Summary [1]

The Book Thief takes place in Germany before and during World War II. The story is told from the point of view of Death, who finds the story of the Book Thief, Liesel Meminger, to be very interesting, as she brushed Death three times in her life. The novel begins when Liesel's mother takes Liesel and her brother Werner to live with foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. We learn that her father is a communist, and her mother is chronically sick. Her brother dies during the trip and Liesel steals the apprentice Gravediggers' Grave Digging handbook, after he drops it in the snow. This would be Liesel's first close call with death, as well as her first time stealing a book. Liesel's foster mother and father, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, treat her well, though Rosa often insults Liesel by calling her a pig in German (affectionately, of course). Hans teaches her how to read using "The Gravedigger's Handbook", and she continues stealing books from various sources - mainly the library of Ilsa Hermann, the mayor's wife, a friend of hers who enjoys and tolerates her thievery. Liesel also befriends the other children of Himmel Street, including Rudy Steiner, who is in love with her and is also her best friend.

Eventually, Hans and Rosa take in and hide Max Vandenburg, a Jewish man whose father saved Hans' life in World War I. Max becomes friends with Liesel, making her two books, using repainted pages from a copy of Mein Kampf(My Struggle) and showing her his life story in a series of sketches. However, the Nazi presence and the rise of World War II throw all of their lives into turmoil. When a parade of Jews is brought through the town, Hans gives a piece of bread to an old man. He and the old man are whipped and the family lives in fear of the Gestapo searching their house and discovering Max. They arrange for Max to leave and rendezvous with Hans after a few days; however, when Hans arrives at the meeting point he finds only a note that they believe is from Max saying "You've done enough." After a few weeks, Hans is ordered into the army, as is Rudy's father, Alex Steiner - this is also a punishment; Rudy shows athletic and academic promise and is offered a place at an 'elite' school which was meant for Germany's future elite group, which his parents refuse. Hans is drafted into an air raid service, however after a few months he breaks his leg and returns home.

Liesel begins to write her own book, The Book Thief : the story of her life. When Himmel Street is bombed, she is the only survivor, as she was in the Hubermanns' basement, finishing her book that Hans encouraged her to read. She finds the bodies of her foster parents, and then Rudy. This is Death's third encounter with Liesel. Distraught, she drops the book, which Death finds and keeps. She goes to live with the Hermanns and when Alex Steiner returns, works in his tailor shop. In 1945, Max Vanderburg walks into the shop and he and Liesel are reunited. At the end of the book, Death tells us that she dies in Sydney, Australia, although few other details of her life are revealed, and gives her back the book, along with a truth he can not tell anyone else: "I am haunted by humans."

Total Death Encounters: 1) When Liesel was in the train with her younger brother. Werner coughed and stared blankly into the floor as death came and noticed Liesel. 2) After an air raid an American bomber plane crashes into the woods just at the end of Himmel street, Rudy walks to the dying man in the plane and puts a teddy bear on his chest before being carried away. Death saw Liesel and recognized her. 3)During a unknown midnight air raid on Munich, the bombers missed and hit Himmel street. Death watched as Liesel ran to see all of her dead peers. He was especially sad to take Rudy, He had so much life and so much to live for. He takes his soul when Liesel bent down to gave him a final farewell kiss, as she was in love with him after all. This is when Death finds the book.

Editorial Review [2]

The Book Thief will be appreciated for Mr. Zusak's audacity, also on display in his earlier I Am the Messenger. It will be widely read and admired because it tells a story in which books become treasures. And because there's no arguing with a sentiment like that.

[1] Wikipedia.org: The Book Thief
[2] The Book Thief - Markus Zusak - Review - Books - New York Times

The Finkler Question (Man Booker Prize winner)

The Finkler Question is a novel by British author and journalist, Howard Jacobson (1942- ), published in 2010 and won the Man Booker Prize on October 12, 2010.

The Finkler Question

Video: Howard Jacobson wins Booker Prize

Plot Summary [1]

The story centers on Julian Treslove, a former radio producer whose career has failed to rise as it should have, mainly because of his lack of focus on the task in hand and a degree of self-doubt which robs him of the certainty he needs to succeed.
Treslove has two close friends, Sam Finkler, a television producer and Jewish philosopher and the former teacher of Sam and Julian, Libor Sevcik, an elderly widower, also Jewish, who in some ways acts as a mentor to the two men.
One day, while walking near Broadcasting House Treslove is mugged and all his valuables are stolen. Treslove is mortified to realize that his assailant is a woman. And to complicate matters, although the words she uttered at the time of the robbery are indistinct, on further reflection, Treslove comes to believe that they were the words, “You Jew!”.
The thought of being the victim of an anti-Semitic attack, when he is in fact a Gentile begins to worry Treslove. Because of his two friends Sam and Libor, Treslove is already familiar with all things Jewish, and he begins to think about anti-Semitism, reading of attacks on Jews in Canada, France, Germany and Argentina. Slowly, his mugging begins to take the form in his mind of an “atrocity”, and as the novel unwinds, poor Treslove begins to question whether he is not in fact Jewish after all, something discerned by the mugger due to innate characteristics which he had not previously recognized.

Editorial Reviews [2]

“It is tempting—after reading something as fine as The Finkler Question—not to bother reviewing it in any meaningful sense but simply to urge you to put down this paper and go and buy as many copies as you can carry … Full of wit, warmth, intelligence, human feeling and understanding. It is also beautifully written … Indeed, there’s so much that is first rate in the manner of Jacobson’s delivery that I could write all day on his deployment of language without once mentioning what the book is about.”—Edward Docx, Observer (UK)

“Howard Jacobson [is] a writer able to recognize the humor in almost any situation and a man as expansive as most on the nature of Jewishness.”—Gerald Jacobs, Telegraph (UK)

“This charming novel follows many paths of enquiry, not least the present state of Jewish identity in Britain and how it integrates with the Gentile population. Equally important is its exploration of how men share friendship. All of which is played out with Jacobson’s exceptionally funny riffs and happy-sad refrains … Jacobson’s prose is a seamless roll of blissfully melancholic interludes. Almost every page has a quotable, memorable line.”—Christian House, Independent on Sunday (UK)

“Both an entertaining novel and a humane one.”—Henry Hitchings, Financial Times

“There are some great riffs and skits in The Finkler Question … But at the heart of the book is Julian the wannabe Jew, a wonderful comic creation precisely because he is so tragically touching in his haplessness. The most moving (and funniest) scenes are those in which he and Libor, the widower with nothing more to live for, ruminate on love and Jewishness.”—Adam Lively, Sunday Times (UK)

“[A] bleakly funny meditation on loss, belonging and personal identity.”—Ross Gilfillan, Daily Mail (UK)

“For some writers a thorough investigation of the situation of British Jews today might do as the subject for a single book. In The Finkler Question it’s combined with his characteristically unsparing—but not unkindly—ruminations on love, aging, death and grief. He also manages his customary—but not easy—trick of fusing all of the above with genuine comedy … No wonder that, as with most of Jacobson’s novels, you finish The Finkler Question feeling both faintly exhausted and richly entertained.”—James Walton, Sunday Telegraph (UK)

“A terrifying and ambitious novel, full of dangerous shallows and dark, deep water. It takes in the mysteries of male friendship, the relentlessness of grief and the lure of emotional parasitism.”—Alex Clark, Guardian (UK)

“The Finkler Question balances precariously a bleak moralizing with life-affirming humor.”—Bryan Cheyette, Independent (UK)

“Another masterpiece … The Finkler Question is further proof, if any was needed, of Jacobson’s mastery of humor. But above all it is a testament to his ability to describe—perhaps it would be better to say inhabit—the personal and moral worlds of his disparate characters.”—Matthew Syed, Times (UK)

“Jacobson writes perceptively about how durable friendships are compounded, in large part, of envy, schadenfreude and betrayal.”—Jonathan Beckman, Literary Review (UK)

“The Finkler Question is very funny, utterly original, and addresses a topic of contemporary fascination … The writing is wonderfully mobile, and inventive, and Jacobson’s signature is to be found in every sentence … The Finkler Question is a remarkable work.”—Anthony Julius, Jewish Chronicle

“Jacobson is at the height of his powers … As the men tussle with women and their absence, and their own identities, Jacobson’s wit launches a fusillade of hard-punching aperçus on human nature and its absurdities that only he could have written.”—Ben Felsenberg, Metro (UK)

“The Finkler Question, which is as provocative as it is funny, as angry as it is compassionate, offers a moving testimony to a dilemma as ancient as the Old Testament. It also marks another memorable achievement for Jacobson, a writer who never fires blanks and whose dialogue, which reads like an exchange between Sigmund Freud and Woody Allen, races along like a runaway train.”—Alan Taylor, Herald Scotland

“Howard Jacobson’s latest holler from the halls of comic genius … The opening chapters of this novel boast some of the wittiest, most poignant and sharply intelligent comic prose in the English language … Jacobson’s brilliance thrives on the risk of riding death to a photo-finish, of writing for broke. Exhilaration all the way.”—Tom Adair, Scotsman

“Here are three men who are in varying ways miserably womanless. This is rich soil for comedy, and Jacobson tills it for every regretful laugh he can muster … Perhaps [Jacobson’s] Leopold Bloom time has come at last.”—Irish Independent

“The Finkler Question is characterized by [Jacobson’s] structuring skill and unsimplifying intelligence—this time picking through the connections and differences, hardly unremarked but given fresh treatment here, between vicariousness and parasitism, and between Jewishness, Judaism and Zionism.”—Leo Robson, New Statesman

“Full of caustic moments … that are also, essentially, funny … No matter the book’s themes, the way Jacobson weds humor to seriousness makes it affecting for anyone.”—Eric Herschthal, Jewish Week

[1] ACommonReader.org: Review: The Finkler Question – Howard Jacobson, August 21st, 2010.
[2] Amazon.com: The Finkler Question, Editorial Reviews, October 13, 2010.

Palimpsest (Lambda Literary Award winner)

Palimpsest is a novel by Tiptree, Andre Norton, and Mythopoeic Award winning novelist, poet, and literary critic Catherynne M. Valente (1979- ), published in 2009 and won Lambda Literary Award in the same year; also it was named a 2010 Hugo Award nominee in the Best Novel category.

The novel follows four travelers: Oleg, a New York City locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They've all lost something important in their life: a wife, lover, sister, or direction. They find themselves in Palimpsest after each a spend a night with a stranger who has a tattooed map of a section of the city on his or her body. [1]

Review [2]

“Catherynne M Valente’s Palimpsest just knocks me flat with her use of language: rich, cool, opiated language, language for stories of strange love and hallucinated cities of the mind.” — Warren Ellis, author of Transmetropolitan

“Palimpsest is an elegant and evocative story set in a gorgeous alien wonderland.” — Elizabeth Bear, author of Hammered

"Gorgeously written and deliriously imaginative, Palimpsest is the book for those who love old maps and grow wistful at the sound of a night train. A modern masterpiece in Valente's unique voice and singular sensibility."—Ekaterina Sedia, author of The Alchemy of Stone

“Catherynne Valente has once again proved her mastery of the fantastic. Full to the brim with beautiful images and gorgeous prose, Palimpsest belongs on the same shelf with Calvino's Invisible Cities and Winterson's The Passion. Valente is writing the smartest, gentlest, deepest work in the field, and she's good enough to do it. I remain in awe.”—Daniel Abraham, author of The Long Price Quartet

"It's never enough to merely read a book like Palimpsest, it has to be imbibed, and it's sensuality fully savored."—Nick Bantock, author of The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy

“Outstandingly beautiful prose.”–Publishers Weekly

Palimpsest: A Review [3]

I first heard about the book "Palimpsest" through Livejournal spam. I kept getting reminders that the author, Catherynne Valente, would be reading from her latest novel at the KGB Bar. There was a plot synopsis of the novel in the announcement: something quivering and salacious, but also far, far too coy. Something about four strangers meeting in the night.

Here's the plot synopsis that would have got me to buy her book in person and to hear her read, something I wish I'd done now:

Palimpsest is a book about a city that is also a sexually transmitted disease. You visit the city the night after you fuck somebody infected with it, and then the city possesses your heart and dreams.

After you are infected, you can only be conscious of the lack of magic, mystery, and beauty in your life now that you have seen the alternative. The lack is as brutal as a spiked bat!

Palimpsest is the true reality that you have always known lies just out of reach for you. Like HIV, once you are infected with the city, you die unless you find a cure. But there is only one cure -- permanent immigration to Palimpsest -- and there has been a war that makes this nearly impossible. Good fucking luck, you wanton travelers!

Or, to sum up the theme using Valente's own far more lyric and lucid prose:

"To touch a person...to sleep with a person...is to become a pioneer," she whispered then, "a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to them. I have been so many times to countries like that. I have learned how to make coffee in all their ways, how to share food, how to comfort, how to dance in the native ways. It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate you could say."

* * *

"Palimpsest" is a fantasy novel, I guess. But it is a fantasy novel in the same way that the works of Haruki Murakami or David Mitchell are fantasy novels.

It is "high fiction," a book that tells a story on its own terms, using an uncompromising and invented form to create higher resonance than the genres of either "literary fiction" or "fantasy" are capable of providing.

High fiction is gaining ground in literature and might be literature's best hope for bringing in new souls. It melds the best things about post-modernism, modernism, and genre fiction, while cutting out the excesses of all three disciplines.

High fiction would not be possible without post-modernism's brush clearing, even though reading the triumphs of 60s, 70s, and 80s literature is like reading through the filing cabinet of an English professor while all the air is being sucked out of a sealed room, like some kind of Batman deathtrap.

But post-modernism worked! At least, it worked in television and film. Everything has now been leveled. Thanks to the gimcrackery of image, New York City is just as real a place as Hogwarts. Since this is true, fiction can tell whatever the fuck story it wants now and people will just go with it. Settings can be manipulated and tweaked to conform to the logic of stories without rigorous world building.

Nobody cares what is real anymore, because now even telling "true" stories means we have to incorporate the mystical, the alien, the fantastical, and the arcane. Also, memoirs and reality television have laid such siege to the truth these days that they have stolen it from fiction like a fancy toy, so fiction can do what it pleases.

However, the lessons of modernism have also taught us that formal experimentation, craft, and deployment of a unique style, are the best ways to elevate prose, and they always improve a work when used deliberately and with control. "Ulysses" = huge success! "Finnegan's Wake" = unreadable, unless it is the only book you ever read.

People toiling for decades in the thankless Prose Mines of modernism taught us the limits of language and revealed many of the tricks, traps, inadequacies, and open areas of narrative exploration.

These days, while you write fantasy novels, you must read Faulkner.

Which brings us to the most important component of "high fiction." The fantastic. The genre spirit. Over the years, the genre writers kept the raw spirit of fiction alive by focusing on pure story. Tales! Adventure! Imagination! Crisis! Catharsis!

And that's what people want. Genre writers realized that if they didn't get it from fiction, they'd get it elsewhere. Those with aspirations for high fiction can no longer neglect this audience. This audience is all of us.

High fiction combines the structural freedom of post-modernism, the elevated style of modernism, and the story power of genre. To write a piece of high fiction is to therefore write fiction that challenges a writer's skills on all levels.

This is a great age for such challenges, an age where if you know how to look, you can see that the path is clear for anything. This is the age of high fiction masterpieces such as Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas," Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore," Ursula Le Guin's "The Tombs of Atuin," Susannah Clarke's "Dr. Strange and Mr. Norrell," and Peter Matthiessen's "Shadow Country."

"Palimpsest" is part of this tradition; a tradition struggling out of imagination's protoplasm to reignite the novel for modern readers.

* * *

"Palimpsest" is the story of four people on three continents who journey to the city of Palimpsest together for the first time one night and are then forever linked.

The structure is simple but specially tailored to the subject. The story cycles between the four characters -- each of whom has different desires and problems -- while alternating between the psychogeography of the sexually-transmitted city and the real life dilemmas of four very damaged human beings.

For instance, in order to keep visiting the city, the characters must keep fucking new people who have been there. And every time they visit, they lose something or are permanently altered.

My major problem with this book is also its chief strength. This is not a novel driven by plot or characters. This is a novel driven by setting and by ideas, where the characterization is revealed by the setting. The setting is actuated by the structure, and the structure is lyrical and poetic, replete with images and synesthesias that describe a city that is half-wonder and half-nonsense.

It is a place built for crazy people. Luckily, our protagonists are crazy and fit right in. However, it is a gamble that the reader will be able to empathize with the obsessions of these half-rendered characters. Taken as a story about the safety valve of the imagination, however, "Palimpsest" becomes a book about what people will risk in order to fight for their rightful place.

Sometimes the end result was like reading a beautiful map instead of visiting a real place. Or reading the rules to a game instead of playing it. I am conventional: I wanted more change, growth, risk, and plot.

However, the map and the rules were so engrossing that I stopped caring after awhile and just let my mind savor the possibilities. The ingredients were so fascinating and rare that it became okay that I could not always taste the dish.

* * *

Palimpsest is also really hot.

The characters don't care who they fuck in order to travel to their dream city. Men, women, lepers, the disfigured, the portly, the old, the young, the good, the evil. Every person is their own country and if you want to visit, you have to pay the price.

The tension of the book is the movement between sleaze to the sublime, which is also the tension of sex itself. Isn't it? The passage from life to mystery; the movement from the ordinary to the exalted.

The lowest world is raised up:

"A folktale current in Hokkaido just after the war and passed from conductor to conductor held that the floor of heaven is laced with silver train tracks, and the third rail is solid pearl. The trains that ran along them were fabulous even by the standards of the Shinkansen of today: carriages containing whole pine forests hung with golden lanterns, carriages full of rice terraces, carriages lined in red silk where the meal service brought soup, rice-balls, and a neat lump of opium with persimmon tea poured over it in the most delicate of cups. These trains sped past each other, utterly silent, carrying each a complement of ghosts who clutched the branches like leather handholds, and plucked the green rice to eat raw, and fell back insensate into the laps of women whose faces were painted red from brow to chin. They never stop, never slow, and only with great courage and grace could a spirit slowly progress from car to car, all the way to the conductor's cabin, where all accounts cease, and no man knows what lies therein."

"In Hokkaido, where the snow and ice are so white and pure that they glow blue, it is said that only the highest engineers of Japan Railways know the layout of the railroads on the floor of heaven. They say that those exalted engineers are working, slowly, generation by generation, to lay the tracks on earth so that they mirror exactly the tracks in heaven. When this is done, those marvelous carriages will fall from the sky, and we may know on earth, without paying the terrible fare of death, the gaze of the red women, the light of the forest lanterns, and the taste of persimmon tea."

* * *

Valente has a huge, wild talent and reading her book is intoxicating yet dangerous, like sipping liquor from a crystal goblet and eating dainty sandwiches while getting a massage from an assassin.

It's a book that feels well-tuned and well-edited. Blood was spilled on this book. Whole ink buffalo were slaughtered, and every part was used.

Here's a fascinating and spot-on editorial Valente wrote about why editors are so important, and why self-publishing is not a good idea.

"The general meme seems to be this: with the advent of ebooks, which are definitely going to be the dominant form of book publishing forever and ever, there will no longer be any need for traditional publishers. Each writer will become something of an autonomous press, self-publishing through Amazon and Apple, who are totally awesome indie champions of the little guy, unlike those horrible corporate presses, hiring their own editors, copyeditors, typesetters, marketers, and artists, and putting up their work directly for sale online. Then: profit!"

"I find this to be a horrifying dystopian future, and I'll tell you why."

However, in this editorial, she does bring up a very important point about electronic rights:

"Where I think change could best happen right now is on the contract level. If, for example, e-rights became a subsidiary right I could administer separately, like audio rights, then you'd see a revolution in ebooks as we all experiment. Right now, however, you more or less cannot sell a book to a major publisher without giving them e-rights, and that sucks."

She isn't just whistling Dixie, either. When her partner lost his job and they needed money, she took a YA-novel from "Palimpsest" and turned it into a persistent, online web novel called "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making."

You can read this book for free here, and donate what you want.

I think this is exactly how electronic novels should look, personally. By putting out an online novel this way, an author doesn't have to go through Amazon, Apple, or Google, and they are able to add artwork, audio tracks, links, and "code art" in ways that simply don't work for ebook readers. You can read "Fairyland" from any computer with an internet connection. It can be tweaked. Corrected. Added to.

Unfortunately, "Fairyland" is also an example of a book that a professional writer had to put out without help, unable to pay for good graphic designers, good coders, or good editors, and also unable to convince publishers that this is what an ebook should look like.

Imagine what kind of electronic books publishers could make if they brought all of the resources of the New York industry to bear on this burgeoning market, instead of buying into the idea that Apple or Amazon are in a better position to create and leverage narrative art, which is a ludicrous idea.

* * *

"Palimpsest" is a radical and experimental piece of metatextual prose, cloaked in the guise of a perverted fantasy novel about A City. It is rough, smart, and flawed.

It is a book designed to makes passing it on a radical act. An act of transgression.

And I want to pass it on to you.

I want to put this book in your mind forever.

To make it a part of you. To tattoo it on your flesh. You like to read, right? So come a little closer...don't be shy...just a little bit closer, please... [END]

[1] Wikipedia.org: Palimpsest
[2] Amazon.com: Palimpsest
[3] Palimpsest: A Review by Miracle Jones