The Little Blue Kite

September 1, 2019
A windy New Age parable by postmodern novelist Danielewski (The Familiar, Volume 5: Redwood, 2017, etc.). Danielewski has spent the last few years writing endlessly long, genre-crunching novels that are projected to build to a series of a couple dozen thick volumes, making Proust look like a piker. This latest, falling outside that series, isn't on its face intended for children, since it's got big words like "devastated" and "endeavoring" and big themes like death and psychological dread, but it's full of kid's-book elements, if perhaps as filtered through the post-apocalyptic Hawaiians of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Kai is a kid with a penchant for flying kites, even as his granny warns that with enough string he might "reach the edge of the Murk." It would spoil the fun to reveal just what the Murk and the "immense monster too immense for any one name and hungrier than all the emptiness that haunts the space between all the stars" are, but suffice it to say that Kai isn't shy of tempting fate, the more so as he grows older. And grow older he must, and when he does--well, he's got to choose whether to hunker down in the Murk or throw off the bonds and strings of grown-up life and fly free in the clear blue sky. Guess which he elects? Let Danielewski tell it: "Kai's mind is wide open! Kai's mind has become a sky!" One wonders if Kai's been reading Michael Pollan's book on psychedelics, but no matter; thanks to the little blue kite, he enjoys a fine trip. It's not quite so straightforward, though, for, ever intent on playing language games, Danielewski offers three different ways to read the book, two of them signaled by typographic elements and the other the boring, old-fashioned method of reading the thing straight through. It's up to the reader to judge which is most rewarding--and whether the trip, though refreshingly brief, was worth the effort. Think Jonathan Livingston Seagull with a long, winding tail, and you'll have some of the feel of Danielewski's latest.

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October 14, 2019
This adult picture book aspires to strike inspiration as an all-ages fable in the mold of The Little Prince or The Giving Tree, but like many other attempted followers of this formula, it falls flat. Kai, a curly-haired boy in a yellow shirt, is given a blue kite by a teacher and told to fly it “when you’re ready.” He spends the rest of the book building up the courage to fly the kite into the Murk, a depressing smog that surrounds his undefined world. Danielewski, who made his name with the postmodern horror novel House of Leaves and has spent recent years working on a series of 27 interconnected novels, fills this short text with positive messages about self-assurance, kindness, fighting depression, and cultivating “gentle thoughts.” But they come off as more cloying than enlightening, and the climactic moral doesn’t seem particularly connected to the rest of the story. Danielewski plays with typography and continues a favorite stylistic quirk: printing important words and phrases in colored text. The art by Gonzales, who only receives credit on a back page, is oddly amateurish, with ugly human figures pasted on top of computer-generated skies. The good intentions are overwhelmed by poor craftsmanship and awkward storytelling.

June 1, 2019

The attention-grabbing author of House of Leaves and The Familiar offers a parable featuring timid Kai, who hides a little blue kite in his closet that could carry him away from the Murk, where he now dwells in fear and sadness. One day, he screws up his courage, grabs the kite, and sails above the clouds to find a brave new world where everything is possible--if only he'll let go. Aimed at both children and adults; with full-color illustrations.

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