The Fifty Year Sword

August 27, 2012
This first American edition of Danielewskiâs novella, published in a different form in the Netherlands in 2005, has the theatrical quality of a childrenâs ghost story, complete with stitched-art illustrations (designed by the author), sweeping themes, and fairy-tale tropes. But the tale told by the Story Teller, hired to entertain the children, is nested in the all-too adult story of Chintana, a seamstress suffering through the aftermath of a painful divorce. The smallest daily ritualsâopening a can of âbitter tea leaves,â putting on shoesârequire terrific force, and she has visions of inflicting violence. At her twinâs urging, Chintana attends a Halloween party at an East Texas ranch, where she comes face-to-face with the source of her marriageâs destruction and discovers the Story Tellerâs thirst for revenge. Danielewski (House of Leaves) knows that typographical landscaping can be a narrative tool. With rare exception, he unfurls his tale down one side of the page in quoted speech of different colors representing five orphans whose obscure connection is hinted at in an authorâs note; text is juxtaposed or shares space with illustrations. Tension builds visually; some scenes slows to a sentence per page (a trick the authorâs fans will recognize), vertically tearing the white space (readers resistant to textual hijinks may be frustrated). More of a narrative poem than a novella, this would be well suited to an oral reading and may be best thought of as an objet dâart that chillingly holds us accountable for our worst thoughts. Illus. Agent: WME Entertainment.

May 1, 2012

The setting is decidedly thrillerish: in an East Texas ranch house, five orphans listen attentively to a story about a weapon quest, even as a big black box with five latches looms before them. But given that Danielewski is the author of books like the cutting-edge House of Leaves, don't expect standard, thrillerish writing.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2012
A sometimes arid, sometimes entertaining ghost story for grown-ups by pomo laureate Danielewski (House of Leaves, 2000, etc.). Chintana is in a bad mood. A talented seamstress, she's just been divorced, "forced/to acknowledge, /yet again, /to yet/another insitrusive customer, /her husband Pravat's surprising/departure." The odd portmanteau "insitrusive," apparently a blend of "insistent" and "intrusive," is emblematic; Danielewski likes nothing better than to make up words, with some coinages better than others. (The world flat-out does not need the verb "reconsiderate.") The odd hiccup-y breaks and caesuras also attest to Danielewski's method, which is to break what ought to be prose down into a sort-of-poetry--not terribly good poetry, that, and oddly punctuated, but still inhibiting a reader tempted to skim and speed. Chintana is stuck in East Texas, that grim place of horrors, her time spent in a house that has had more than one spectral guest in the past. Here, as with House of Leaves, Danielewski distinguishes speakers with quotation marks of different colors; even there, the jumble of words, matched by fugitive images, lends itself to a certain confusion, the printed effect of listening too closely to the dialogue of Robert Altman's Popeye. The story, as it is, has its charms, including the implement of the title, a very dangerous weapon that is powerless to produce a visible wound until its recipient turns 50: "Just as/quickly too he slid behind/me and I/felt a sting between/my shoulder blades/and then a fire and a cold and a sudden/something/seep of hurt." The spectral events and unspectral revelations that follow are sure not to improve Chintana's mood. After all, she's already feeling "desacreated." Like House of Leaves, likely destined to become a cult favorite. Harmless fun for those who aren't fans already.

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