The Familiar, Volume 4

December 1, 2016
"Envy is not a vewy laudable twait." No, Elmer Fudd hasn't gone to work for Mossad, but he wouldn't be out of place in this sprawling-by-formula continuation of Danielewski's (Honeysuckle and Pain, 2016, etc.) modern epic.Four volumes in, Danielewski has by now set some parameters that are approaching hard rules; each major player, for instance, gets a font of his or her own, so that Xanther, the protagonist, figures in Minion, while her father, Anwar, is represented, neatly enough, in an ancestral Garamond. It's a field day for the folks down at the Adobe type shop and usually not too hard on the reader's eyes. For his part, the rhotically challenged Warlock ("its cwimes against humanity, committed in the twentieth centuwy, slip beyond ou' pu'view") provides some of the philosophical underpinning for Danielewski's story, in which someone somewhere is always talking about something portentous: human nature, social disintegration, the problem of violence. Oh, and soccer, "a subject mined with violence," which threatens to bring conversation to an end and break the "sense of familiarity and trust that will serve when distance intervenes during volatile interactions." Xanther, her mysterious cat always wandering off somewhere, is heard from perhaps a touch less than in previous books, sometimes now in the sometimes-calligrammatic texting language of just-barely-teenagers. For fans only. From this installment, it's hard to see how Danielewski will keep up the narrative energy to bring the story to a close 20 volumes from now--but readers deep into the series will be wanting more all the same.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 15, 2016

In this fourth volume in National Book Award finalist Danielewski's cult-hit magnum opus, The Familiar, a video gone viral puts 12-year-old protagonist Xanther off school, but surprises await when she stays home with her still-unnamed cat.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2017

In this fourth in an extended saga, we see the multiple disparate plotlines--regarding, for instance, gangster Luther, detective Ozgur, and cab driver Shnorhk--drawing even closer together with obvious interconnection among them. This is notable as Danielewski has maintained separation of each subplot by the use of distinctive typographical arrangements and *{[punctuation]}*; when these story lines ///interact\\\\\\ in a way that creates a sense of *wonder and amazement*. The central plot remains the story of an adolescent girl named Xanther and her tiny, preternaturally powerful cat--"the familiar." As the book opens, there is a period in which the reader remains in doubt about the cliff-hanger from the previous book. This sense of uneasiness is layered with further uncertainty as paranormal flashes of the strange make for a building sense of descent into danger; the outcome remains uncertain. VERDICT The author is innovating wildly not only with text but also with narrative flow, structure, and multiplicity of meaning. Loose, imagistic words are followed by tightly layered prose and pictures; this varied density creates a deeply nuanced reading experience that works. A must-read. [See Prepub Alert, 8/8/16.]--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2017

In this fourth in an extended saga, we see the multiple disparate plotlines--regarding, for instance, gangster Luther, detective Ozgur, and cab driver Shnorhk--drawing even closer together with obvious interconnection among them. This is notable as Danielewski has maintained separation of each subplot by the use of distinctive typographical arrangements and *{[punctuation]}*; when these story lines ///interact\\\\\\ in a way that creates a sense of *wonder and amazement*. The central plot remains the story of an adolescent girl named Xanther and her tiny, preternaturally powerful cat--"the familiar." As the book opens, there is a period in which the reader remains in doubt about the cliff-hanger from the previous book. This sense of uneasiness is layered with further uncertainty as paranormal flashes of the strange make for a building sense of descent into danger; the outcome remains uncertain. VERDICT The author is innovating wildly not only with text but also with narrative flow, structure, and multiplicity of meaning. Loose, imagistic words are followed by tightly layered prose and pictures; this varied density creates a deeply nuanced reading experience that works. A must-read. [See Prepub Alert, 8/8/16.]--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.