The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May

by Mark Z. Danielewski

Overview

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 end up trying to save a creature as fragile as it is dangerous . . . which will change not only her life and the lives of those she has yet to encounter, but this world, too—or at least the world we think we know and the future we take for granted.

(With full-color illustrations throughout.) 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375714948
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/12/2015
Pages:	880
Sales rank:	101,125
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI was born in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles.

Hometown:

Los Angeles, California

Date of Birth:

March 5, 1966

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

B.A., Yale University, 1988; M.F.A., University of Southern California, 1993

Website:

http://www.onlyrevolutions.com

Editorial Reviews

02/09/2015
Set mostly in the L.A. area during a rainy day in May, our first heroine in this metanarrative of typographical trickery is the precocious 12-year-old Xanther, who embarks, with her stepfather, Anwar, on a trip to get a dog—instead, they find a kitten dying in the rain and Xanther’s desperate attempts to save it are intercut with unspooling story fragments. There’s Anwar’s past as developer of a mysterious game engine, his vanished partner Mefisto, and copious hints that reality itself might be a dream or program. Other story lines include the cyberpunk adventures of two programmers in Marfa, Tex., on the run from their own creation; a dogfighter named Victor on the verge of encountering a miracle; a repentant criminal in Singapore; an ace detective named Oz—and so forth. The narratives pile on (each with its own signature font), though none of them of contain any real significance or a three-dimensional character. Danielewski’s (House of Leaves) interest is clearly not in storytelling, but in faux profundity; hence the book’s multitude of wise-sounding quotations, random punctuation, fake code, blank pages, cheap pop-cultural citations, and The Matrix–aping techno-clichés make for familiar reading indeed. (May)

Publishers Weekly

 PRAISE FOR MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI

“One of the most gifted and versatile writers of our time.” —Steven Moore, The Washington Post

“His use of evocative typography—words that visually reinforce their meaning on the page—leaves readers dazzled.” —Kim O’Connor, Slate

“You hold on for dear life by your fingertips, but the exertion is worth it when you finally get to the top and see the panorama of Danielewski’s literary universe.” —Dylan Foley, Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

12/01/2014
Danielewski, who got worldwide attention for House of Leaves and a National Book Award nomination for Only Revolution, offers the first of an ambitious multivolume project. The settings swing from Mexico to Southeast Asia to Venice (Italy and California), and key among the array of characters is 12-year-old Xanther, who sojourns forth with her dad to get a dog and ends up caring for a creature that's far more edgy and exotic.

Library Journal

★ 2015-02-17
Fabulist and avant-gardist Danielewski (House of Leaves, 2000, etc.) embarks upon a long-promised 27-volume fantasia with this sprawling, continent-hopping potpourri. On its face, this first installment is the story of a girl. And rain. And a "ridiculous dog bed." And a cat. And then the whole of human civilization and of the human propensity to do wrong while struggling to do right. The storyline is scarcely describable. Think of it this way: what if a prepubescent Leopold Bloom had fallen down a rabbit hole and wound up in Southeast Asia with a Pomona street gang in tow? Young Xanther, bespectacled, mouth full of metal braces, acne-spattered and left-handed, epileptic, self-doubting and sometimes self-hating, is a mess, just as every 12-year-old is a mess. She is also, her doctor assures her, something more: "If I could grant you one certainty, Xanther, one which you could hold on to without dissolving under all your scrutiny, let it just be how remarkable a young girl you are." So she is: there's scarcely a thing in this world she's not interested in and has theories about, spurred on by a brilliantly eccentric dad who's always talking about engines and the thought of Hermagoras of Temnos, "whoever he was, a rhetor, whatever a rhetor is." So what does she have to do with an Armenian cabbie, a pidgin-speaking Singaporean, and a Chicano street gang? Ah, that's the question, one that the reader will be asking hundreds of pages on, tantalized by the glimmerings of answers that peek through rainy calligrams and sentences endlessly nested like so much computer code. Danielewski's efforts at street-tough dialect verge into parody ("Like this be plastic shit. All scratched up and chipped"), but most everything about this vast, elusive, sometimes even illusory narrative shouts tour de force. Strangely, it works, though not without studied effort on the reader's part. And as for all the loose ends? No worries—there are 26 volumes to come in which to tie them up.

Kirkus Reviews