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Basal Ganglia
Basal Ganglia casts an unsettling spell, but one that in its aphoristic intensity and lightning-flash insights into human loneliness and connection, achieves a genuine empathic wisdom." - SERGIO DE LA PAVA, author of A Naked Singularity
"Matthew Revert is one of the visionaries. What else can you say?" - SCOTT MCCLANAHAN, author of Hill William and Crapalachia
As teenagers, two lovers, Rollo and Ingrid, escape the world as it is known to live underground in a sprawling pillow fort that mirrors the structure of the human brain. Construction of the fort takes 25 years and once complete, their life exists to honor the fort in all it requires. Basal Ganglia begins countless years after they have become enslaved to the fort process. Rollo and Ingrid have lost any connection to their pasts and each other. Nothing exists beyond the patterns required by the fort. In an effort to become more than stasis, Ingrid expresses her desire to have a baby. Not wanting to subject another human to their strange world, she decides she will knit the baby using materials Rollo gathers from the fort. The emergence of this baby leads to paranoia between Rollo and Ingrid with both believing the other means the child harm. Within the confines of their cloistered world, the two engage in psychological warfare, desperately searching for a conclusion they don't understand. As a result, they will find connection with their past, each other and the true nature of their identities.
"Matthew Revert is one of the visionaries. What else can you say?" - SCOTT MCCLANAHAN, author of Hill William and Crapalachia
As teenagers, two lovers, Rollo and Ingrid, escape the world as it is known to live underground in a sprawling pillow fort that mirrors the structure of the human brain. Construction of the fort takes 25 years and once complete, their life exists to honor the fort in all it requires. Basal Ganglia begins countless years after they have become enslaved to the fort process. Rollo and Ingrid have lost any connection to their pasts and each other. Nothing exists beyond the patterns required by the fort. In an effort to become more than stasis, Ingrid expresses her desire to have a baby. Not wanting to subject another human to their strange world, she decides she will knit the baby using materials Rollo gathers from the fort. The emergence of this baby leads to paranoia between Rollo and Ingrid with both believing the other means the child harm. Within the confines of their cloistered world, the two engage in psychological warfare, desperately searching for a conclusion they don't understand. As a result, they will find connection with their past, each other and the true nature of their identities.
120 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 1, 2013
4 people are currently reading
430 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Revert
40 books94 followersMatthew Revert is a writer, musician and graphic designer from Melbourne, Australia.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
January 17, 2015
I’m a big fan of Matthew Revert’s work. The Tumours Made Me Interesting was an amazing piece of fiction and A Million Versions of Right is untouchable in its weirdness. Even his cover art, which has become ubiquitous in the bizarro scene, never fails to impress and surprise me in much the same way Basal Ganglia did.
This book didn’t deliver what I was expecting. It gave me something else entirely. Something wonderful in its own right.
Basal Ganglia doesn’t employ any of the humor of some of Revert’s other books. Instead it’s a somber and allegorical tale about symbiotic (perhaps toxic) relationships and what you must give up in order to love. Every word in this book is loaded with hidden meaning, and it forces the reader to draw parallels from their own lives I’m sure they’re not totally comfortable drawing. The story of Rollo and Ingrid is enrapturing in its banality and heartbreaking in its implication.
The prose is powerful, ornate, yet at the same time, somewhat clinical. There’s a detached sort of longing employed with this narration that almost makes it read like the saddest set of VCR instructions you’ve ever heard. I’d go so far as to say that the narration itself is the actual main character of the story. That’s how much of the tone Revert’s choice of language sets for this book.
Overall, this isn’t necessarily my favorite of Revert’s works, but that’s like saying raspberry is my least favorite flavor of lollipop. IT’S STILL A LOLLIPOP. IT’S STILL DELICIOUS.
This book didn’t deliver what I was expecting. It gave me something else entirely. Something wonderful in its own right.
Basal Ganglia doesn’t employ any of the humor of some of Revert’s other books. Instead it’s a somber and allegorical tale about symbiotic (perhaps toxic) relationships and what you must give up in order to love. Every word in this book is loaded with hidden meaning, and it forces the reader to draw parallels from their own lives I’m sure they’re not totally comfortable drawing. The story of Rollo and Ingrid is enrapturing in its banality and heartbreaking in its implication.
The prose is powerful, ornate, yet at the same time, somewhat clinical. There’s a detached sort of longing employed with this narration that almost makes it read like the saddest set of VCR instructions you’ve ever heard. I’d go so far as to say that the narration itself is the actual main character of the story. That’s how much of the tone Revert’s choice of language sets for this book.
Overall, this isn’t necessarily my favorite of Revert’s works, but that’s like saying raspberry is my least favorite flavor of lollipop. IT’S STILL A LOLLIPOP. IT’S STILL DELICIOUS.
August 4, 2016
(This review was originally written for and posted at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography's site. I purchased the book, albeit wildly discounted during a bizarro binge.)
Sometimes, a quick read highlights the enduring poignancy of a book's message; sometimes it's a matter of a novel being meant as a one-sitting escape into a world that goes far beyond the distance between two covers. And sometimes a book is mercifully quick, not because it's a chore to read but because, like pulling off a practically-grafted-to-your-arm Band-aid, it hurts less just to get it over with so the reader and the tortured characters can all move on as painlessly and as quickly as possible.
Such is the case with Matthew Revert's Basal Ganglia, an ostensibly odd novella that is, at its core, a meditation on the fine line that separates the contended familiarity of marital habits from brewing hostility. Its main (and only, really) characters are Rollo and Ingrid, who began as teenage lovers and are now both consumed with and isolated by the underground pillow-and-blanket fort that Rollo had built to mirror the structure of the human brain and has been indefatigably maintaining for years. With no connection to the outside world, all external conflict has been removed; what unites them in purpose has removed any common enemies that would strengthen their roles as teammates, leaving them to foster alternately resentment and indifference between them. Ingrid soon declares that she wants a child but is reluctant to expose another life to their strange, secluded world, asking that Rollo play his part in the creation of a new life by gathering materials intended for repairing the fort so she can use them to knit their baby.
What ensues is a cautionary tale about all-consuming love: Rollo and Ingrid have reduced the entirety of their world to nothing more than the two of them and the fort, losing sight of themselves as one whole comprising two parts that possess histories and individual identities. The arrival of the baby--a thing that Ingrid protects with such a fiercely believable maternal instinct that I'd find myself worrying about the newborn's safety at certain points--brings their long-suppressed issues screaming to the surface, turning their knitted offspring into a nonliving but tangible thing that becomes the embodiment of the couple's living but intangible hostilities. Both Rollo and Ingrid fear the other will inflict some harm on the baby and damn near tear down their decades-old fort in her efforts to keep the baby from him and his need to know that the baby really exists, as the (still totally inanimate) baby quickly supplants the fort as the ultimate manifestation of their union, only to just as swiftly become the physical representation of the psychological war that has finally erupted between the couple.
One of the things that struck me most immediately about this novella is the gender roles that Rollo and Ingrid assume, not just in terms of their level playing field and strength, but also how they each assume traits of the other's gender to their benefit. Allowing the child to be the tipping point for both characters makes for some of the most overtly effective shattering of gender-dictated stereotypes I've seen in a while, which I think can be attributed to three things: Rollo and Ingrid's individual perspectives receiving equal attention; getting to see how the arrival of a child affects the father just as much as the mother on an individual basis as well as within the confines of a relationship that has shifted focus as it has expanded to include a third; and that both characters possess qualities and characteristics that are presumed to exist almost exclusively within the realm of the other's gender (some examples: Rollo has experienced the joy of creation by way of the fort both he and Ingrid tend to with almost parental obsession and Rollo, unlike Ingrid, begins lactating by the end of the book; Ingrid sprouted a beard before the novella began and assumes the masculine role of the protector in terms of their child). Such atypically balanced and implicitly empathetic regard for gender makes the emotional turmoil of wanting, having and raising children--all of which come with the knee-jerk fear of overwhelming responsibility bitterly feuding with the emotional satisfaction of being charged with the care and protection of a totally dependant being, all wrapped up in a life-changing event--rife with the potential to wreak havoc on man and woman alike.
The yarn Revert spins could be just another take on the familiar tale of a relationship on the rocks and that ill-advised, last-ditch efforts to "fix" years of unacknowledged damage with a baby, but its ability to refashion an ordinary situation into something extraordinary with its offbeat elements (a pillow fort and a knitted child, mainly) keeps things refreshingly focused. There is no fear of childhood scars bringing itself to the forefront because the child in question is made of the same materials as the fort--a fort that is its builder's very own return to the womb (if I knew more about psychology, I'd have something clever to say about the yawning chasm between the part of the body the fort actually represents and that upon which its design is based). Rollo has spent so much time and effort making sure his fort keeps the outside out that he has neglected life inside the fort and is in no way emotionally prepared for a child, either the care it needs or the issues it will inevitably drudge up. The fort is rich in symbolic purpose, demonstrating how two people can work toward a common goal in isolation, underscoring the dangers of living for one obsessive purpose and detailing what happens when a life becomes all purpose and no pleasure.
Basal Ganglia is devastating, fascinating, brutally honest and cautiously hopeful. But most of all, it offers insight and imagination in equal measures, offering both a new take on an old story and compelling characters who breathe oceans of sympathetic humanity into what often err on the side of black-and-white arguments.
Sometimes, a quick read highlights the enduring poignancy of a book's message; sometimes it's a matter of a novel being meant as a one-sitting escape into a world that goes far beyond the distance between two covers. And sometimes a book is mercifully quick, not because it's a chore to read but because, like pulling off a practically-grafted-to-your-arm Band-aid, it hurts less just to get it over with so the reader and the tortured characters can all move on as painlessly and as quickly as possible.
Such is the case with Matthew Revert's Basal Ganglia, an ostensibly odd novella that is, at its core, a meditation on the fine line that separates the contended familiarity of marital habits from brewing hostility. Its main (and only, really) characters are Rollo and Ingrid, who began as teenage lovers and are now both consumed with and isolated by the underground pillow-and-blanket fort that Rollo had built to mirror the structure of the human brain and has been indefatigably maintaining for years. With no connection to the outside world, all external conflict has been removed; what unites them in purpose has removed any common enemies that would strengthen their roles as teammates, leaving them to foster alternately resentment and indifference between them. Ingrid soon declares that she wants a child but is reluctant to expose another life to their strange, secluded world, asking that Rollo play his part in the creation of a new life by gathering materials intended for repairing the fort so she can use them to knit their baby.
What ensues is a cautionary tale about all-consuming love: Rollo and Ingrid have reduced the entirety of their world to nothing more than the two of them and the fort, losing sight of themselves as one whole comprising two parts that possess histories and individual identities. The arrival of the baby--a thing that Ingrid protects with such a fiercely believable maternal instinct that I'd find myself worrying about the newborn's safety at certain points--brings their long-suppressed issues screaming to the surface, turning their knitted offspring into a nonliving but tangible thing that becomes the embodiment of the couple's living but intangible hostilities. Both Rollo and Ingrid fear the other will inflict some harm on the baby and damn near tear down their decades-old fort in her efforts to keep the baby from him and his need to know that the baby really exists, as the (still totally inanimate) baby quickly supplants the fort as the ultimate manifestation of their union, only to just as swiftly become the physical representation of the psychological war that has finally erupted between the couple.
One of the things that struck me most immediately about this novella is the gender roles that Rollo and Ingrid assume, not just in terms of their level playing field and strength, but also how they each assume traits of the other's gender to their benefit. Allowing the child to be the tipping point for both characters makes for some of the most overtly effective shattering of gender-dictated stereotypes I've seen in a while, which I think can be attributed to three things: Rollo and Ingrid's individual perspectives receiving equal attention; getting to see how the arrival of a child affects the father just as much as the mother on an individual basis as well as within the confines of a relationship that has shifted focus as it has expanded to include a third; and that both characters possess qualities and characteristics that are presumed to exist almost exclusively within the realm of the other's gender (some examples: Rollo has experienced the joy of creation by way of the fort both he and Ingrid tend to with almost parental obsession and Rollo, unlike Ingrid, begins lactating by the end of the book; Ingrid sprouted a beard before the novella began and assumes the masculine role of the protector in terms of their child). Such atypically balanced and implicitly empathetic regard for gender makes the emotional turmoil of wanting, having and raising children--all of which come with the knee-jerk fear of overwhelming responsibility bitterly feuding with the emotional satisfaction of being charged with the care and protection of a totally dependant being, all wrapped up in a life-changing event--rife with the potential to wreak havoc on man and woman alike.
The yarn Revert spins could be just another take on the familiar tale of a relationship on the rocks and that ill-advised, last-ditch efforts to "fix" years of unacknowledged damage with a baby, but its ability to refashion an ordinary situation into something extraordinary with its offbeat elements (a pillow fort and a knitted child, mainly) keeps things refreshingly focused. There is no fear of childhood scars bringing itself to the forefront because the child in question is made of the same materials as the fort--a fort that is its builder's very own return to the womb (if I knew more about psychology, I'd have something clever to say about the yawning chasm between the part of the body the fort actually represents and that upon which its design is based). Rollo has spent so much time and effort making sure his fort keeps the outside out that he has neglected life inside the fort and is in no way emotionally prepared for a child, either the care it needs or the issues it will inevitably drudge up. The fort is rich in symbolic purpose, demonstrating how two people can work toward a common goal in isolation, underscoring the dangers of living for one obsessive purpose and detailing what happens when a life becomes all purpose and no pleasure.
Basal Ganglia is devastating, fascinating, brutally honest and cautiously hopeful. But most of all, it offers insight and imagination in equal measures, offering both a new take on an old story and compelling characters who breathe oceans of sympathetic humanity into what often err on the side of black-and-white arguments.
December 19, 2016
Wow.
I don't remember reading a book that got me researching so much WHILE I was reading it. Fractals, Schizophrenia, you name it. I've Googled it.
Wow.
What a strange and powerful little book this was. I don't mean to use the word "little" in any dismissive way. It's just very small. I've microread the hell out of this thing and I've finished it in about three days.
I don't know what to tell you, really. The prismatic nature of BASAL GANGLIA enables many plausible readings and Matthew Revert's prose is so elusive it's tough to steer you towards any precise interpretation, really. What I'm going to tell you is this: Matthew Revert explored the relationship between human nature and the cosmos and really seek to understand the reasons behind our behavior. The invisible strings that pull out strings every day. And his answer rings more true than anything I've heard up until now.
BASAL GANGLIA is a beautiful and disturbing read. Nothing made me believe in the possible existence of God more than this intense allegory. Matthew Revert has compressed the entire universe in one, dense book and it's called BASAL GANGLIA. Get it. Let it open up your mind for the Holidays.
I don't remember reading a book that got me researching so much WHILE I was reading it. Fractals, Schizophrenia, you name it. I've Googled it.
Wow.
What a strange and powerful little book this was. I don't mean to use the word "little" in any dismissive way. It's just very small. I've microread the hell out of this thing and I've finished it in about three days.
I don't know what to tell you, really. The prismatic nature of BASAL GANGLIA enables many plausible readings and Matthew Revert's prose is so elusive it's tough to steer you towards any precise interpretation, really. What I'm going to tell you is this: Matthew Revert explored the relationship between human nature and the cosmos and really seek to understand the reasons behind our behavior. The invisible strings that pull out strings every day. And his answer rings more true than anything I've heard up until now.
BASAL GANGLIA is a beautiful and disturbing read. Nothing made me believe in the possible existence of God more than this intense allegory. Matthew Revert has compressed the entire universe in one, dense book and it's called BASAL GANGLIA. Get it. Let it open up your mind for the Holidays.
October 29, 2013
Basal Ganglia is one of the most difficult books I've ever read, and if we were looking at this text from a list of pros and cons, that would be filed under pros. I'm not ashamed to admit that the content much of the time eluded my understanding, but it was the strength and power of the prose, the sheer boldness of language bursting forth from every page, that urged me to read on.
I am no beginner to Lazy Fascist Press. I tackled Broken Piano with President with giddiness, absorbed the bohemian theatrics of Chick Bassist in just two days, devoured Of Thimble and Threat and learned to be an absurdist interpreter with Please Do Not Shoot Me in the Face. The verbal gymnastics on display in Basal Ganglia are on a whole other level.
Rollo and Ingrid, two starcrossed lovers are holed up in a fort, each paranoid the other is out to hurt their baby. Along the way, different sections of the fort are described to parallel sections of the human brain. Because of this, I was never quite sure if what I was reading was a giant metaphor for man/woman relations or meant to be taken literally. I've heard people offer up both options as the correct one.
It was two passages, in particular, which helped me make up my own mind, as Matthew Revert advised me to draw my own conclusions as many artists with integrity would.
*POSSIBLE SPOILERS*
The first: "This is a commitment she makes with
discretion, trying to mask the commitment from her deeper self
who understands the lie. The commitment rests on a precise
course of action Rollo, although not aware of it, must abide by.
Her commitment allows for its own retraction should Rollo
deviate from the highly specific path she has built for him to
follow. It is a path so complex not even Ingrid comprehends
it. One she hopes Rollo will fail to follow. The commitment is
designed to rationalize the baby’s addition, and in that aim, it is
successful."
This passage spoke to me with regards to the complications whenever a man and woman open their lives to each other in the name of this thing we call love. Living arrangements are uprooted, families are pulled in, and along the way, we're supposed to have this telepathic prescience about what it means to be in love, and to know whether the joint affair is secure or if the 'bloom is off the rose'.
The second passage:
'Goodbye is the most dishonest word language has conjured. It is a muscle
we flex to intimidate and impress. A word without flesh. Goodbye
is simply a word preceding hello. To truly leave another, one
must never seek contact again. Only death is goodbye.'
Words like these you will find in any Matthew Revert work. This kind of razor sharp sadness is his trademark, his calling card, and he uses it to slice through all of humanity's cliches and misconceptions. We should never forget that the act of loving someone else with all of our heart is an inherently dangerous act. In the end, that is what I feel Basal Ganglia is really about.
I am no beginner to Lazy Fascist Press. I tackled Broken Piano with President with giddiness, absorbed the bohemian theatrics of Chick Bassist in just two days, devoured Of Thimble and Threat and learned to be an absurdist interpreter with Please Do Not Shoot Me in the Face. The verbal gymnastics on display in Basal Ganglia are on a whole other level.
Rollo and Ingrid, two starcrossed lovers are holed up in a fort, each paranoid the other is out to hurt their baby. Along the way, different sections of the fort are described to parallel sections of the human brain. Because of this, I was never quite sure if what I was reading was a giant metaphor for man/woman relations or meant to be taken literally. I've heard people offer up both options as the correct one.
It was two passages, in particular, which helped me make up my own mind, as Matthew Revert advised me to draw my own conclusions as many artists with integrity would.
*POSSIBLE SPOILERS*
The first: "This is a commitment she makes with
discretion, trying to mask the commitment from her deeper self
who understands the lie. The commitment rests on a precise
course of action Rollo, although not aware of it, must abide by.
Her commitment allows for its own retraction should Rollo
deviate from the highly specific path she has built for him to
follow. It is a path so complex not even Ingrid comprehends
it. One she hopes Rollo will fail to follow. The commitment is
designed to rationalize the baby’s addition, and in that aim, it is
successful."
This passage spoke to me with regards to the complications whenever a man and woman open their lives to each other in the name of this thing we call love. Living arrangements are uprooted, families are pulled in, and along the way, we're supposed to have this telepathic prescience about what it means to be in love, and to know whether the joint affair is secure or if the 'bloom is off the rose'.
The second passage:
'Goodbye is the most dishonest word language has conjured. It is a muscle
we flex to intimidate and impress. A word without flesh. Goodbye
is simply a word preceding hello. To truly leave another, one
must never seek contact again. Only death is goodbye.'
Words like these you will find in any Matthew Revert work. This kind of razor sharp sadness is his trademark, his calling card, and he uses it to slice through all of humanity's cliches and misconceptions. We should never forget that the act of loving someone else with all of our heart is an inherently dangerous act. In the end, that is what I feel Basal Ganglia is really about.
November 10, 2015
This was a fascinating read for me. It is a love story, but that really gives no indication of what really lies within. It is not the story per se, but how that story is told that really stood out to me.
As a young couple in love, Rollo and Ingrid do not fit in with the rest. Feeling ostracized, they make the decision to build an underground fort all their own, isolated from the rest of the world. Years later, the story begins as they have drifted from each other, rarely speaking and only focused on fort related tasks.
Here are a few examples of the language used to convey the story:
"The knowledge he has to let go is much worse than the moment it happens. We invent attachments that feed on past loss. Silent fear finds its voice in objects we keep, reaching a volume we cannot ignore when goodbye arrives."
"He is not permitted to respond in the manner he would like. A thought passes through many filters before it emerges as something communicated. Each filter works to remove venom. Spite. Responsibility. Rollo's filters remove so much there is nothing left to communicate. "I am fine. Just Hungry. When do we start?""
Though the writing is very descriptive and deep in it's perceptions of what is going on, it still maintains a transparency. The way the characters, their situation, and their behaviors are analyzed is something beyond comparison. Revert connects all of these things brilliantly to abstract and real world concepts in a way I have not seen before. I found myself perceiving and interpreting my reality differently while reading, and will continue to do so because of this book.
As a young couple in love, Rollo and Ingrid do not fit in with the rest. Feeling ostracized, they make the decision to build an underground fort all their own, isolated from the rest of the world. Years later, the story begins as they have drifted from each other, rarely speaking and only focused on fort related tasks.
Here are a few examples of the language used to convey the story:
"The knowledge he has to let go is much worse than the moment it happens. We invent attachments that feed on past loss. Silent fear finds its voice in objects we keep, reaching a volume we cannot ignore when goodbye arrives."
"He is not permitted to respond in the manner he would like. A thought passes through many filters before it emerges as something communicated. Each filter works to remove venom. Spite. Responsibility. Rollo's filters remove so much there is nothing left to communicate. "I am fine. Just Hungry. When do we start?""
Though the writing is very descriptive and deep in it's perceptions of what is going on, it still maintains a transparency. The way the characters, their situation, and their behaviors are analyzed is something beyond comparison. Revert connects all of these things brilliantly to abstract and real world concepts in a way I have not seen before. I found myself perceiving and interpreting my reality differently while reading, and will continue to do so because of this book.
November 14, 2013
We often hide from the ones closest to us. Even more so, we spend a whole lot of our lives hiding from ourselves.
November 22, 2013
( I wrote this review for DigBoston, you can check it out here with all the pretty pictures included: http://digboston.com/boston-arts-thea... )
Basal Ganglia is a heartbreaking, dreamlike meditation on love, isolation, the limits of communication, the divide of gender, the fear of parenting, questioning what is the self, and the dangers of obsession and control.
Also it’s about pillow forts.
I’d like to say that the book had me at pillow forts, but really I am just a sucker for a well-executed meditation on human isolation, both emotional and physical, and the way it can bring all that’s wrong with us to the forefront. Basicially I’m into rom-coms.
Essentially, Matthew Revert’s Basal Ganglia details the implosion of two lovers, Rollo and Ingrid, who live in an enormous pillow fort and who are both afraid the other is trying to harm their new baby.
The various sections of the massive fort are named after different sections of the brain and as a reader you’re never quite sure if this is supposed to be a tip off that Rollo and Ingrid and their whole blanket fort world are meant to be allegorical and that they actually represent personifications of the different parts of the human mind. The author lets you make up your own mind on this and never plants his flag firmly on either side of the debate. Mostly because that doesn’t really matter.
Even if Rollo and Ingrid are meant to be symbols they are also, more importantly, fully fleshed out characters and as readers we care about them and what happens to them throughout the book.
Once I understood the basic plot points of the book I thought I was getting prepared for something like The Shining set in a pillow fort instead of a haunted hotel. I was wrong. Even though that does sound kind of batshit great, what Revert does with this setting and his characters is far better than that.
Despite its fantastic setting and surreal tone, the book isn’t about giving you answers regarding how this world and the blanket fort come to be. Likewise, the book also isn’t really about parading around a menagerie of weird ideas just to dazzle the reader with its own exotic imagination. No, this book uses its unusual trappings to explore how men and women in love interact with one another in a startlingly fresh way.
It uses the absurdity and alienness of this little vacuum world to lure you into a character study about what a relationship is when stripped of all outside influences. How this can foster the intimacy of an arrangement but then quickly cripple and poison the connection between two people.
Basal Ganglia is a book about what happens when the sanctuary and fortress you’ve built in your mind to keep you safe also end up preventing anyone from getting close.
And how that can destroy you.
Because, inextricably, part of who we are is the people who are close to us.
I first became aware of Matthew Revert from his images. The man has designed some of the most elegantly decimated cover art for fiction that I’ve ever seen.
The first time I saw his work it was gracing covers for a slew of books published by Lazy Fascist Press, a consortium of high-minded weirdoes who write interesting and strange fiction. I was very taken by his cover art for other authors but when I found out that he also wrote his own fiction (and that it was damn good) I was actually kind of pissed off.
No one person should horde all that talent.
It isn’t fair to the rest of us and it just makes Revert too goddamn powerful as a creator. Hopefully there’s something he isn’t good at. I mean even Prince can’t play brass. And no matter how good Revert is he can’t be better than Prince.
(Early Prince, natch)
When reading Basal Ganglia you begin to understand that Revert holds a mastery over words as well as images. His prose is as carefully chaotic and ornately orchestrated as his cover art.
Much of the writing here feels philosophical, almost platonic in its tone,
“It is in the darkness of our secrets that our personality is born.”
There is a quavering, syncopated, beautifully wounded heart that powers this work. It hides itself poorly for all its cunning and by the end of the book you’re allowed to witness it in all of its tattered and fragile glory.
At one point Revert writes, “A new symphony drowning out the old.” That’s how this book feels. Like an invitation to a new world of music. To quote one of the aforesaid Prince’s musical idols Jimi Hendrix:
“So to you I shall put an end. Then you’ll never hear surf music again.”
[Basal Ganglia is published by Lazy Fascist Press and you can purchase at Amazon.]
Basal Ganglia is a heartbreaking, dreamlike meditation on love, isolation, the limits of communication, the divide of gender, the fear of parenting, questioning what is the self, and the dangers of obsession and control.
Also it’s about pillow forts.
I’d like to say that the book had me at pillow forts, but really I am just a sucker for a well-executed meditation on human isolation, both emotional and physical, and the way it can bring all that’s wrong with us to the forefront. Basicially I’m into rom-coms.
Essentially, Matthew Revert’s Basal Ganglia details the implosion of two lovers, Rollo and Ingrid, who live in an enormous pillow fort and who are both afraid the other is trying to harm their new baby.
The various sections of the massive fort are named after different sections of the brain and as a reader you’re never quite sure if this is supposed to be a tip off that Rollo and Ingrid and their whole blanket fort world are meant to be allegorical and that they actually represent personifications of the different parts of the human mind. The author lets you make up your own mind on this and never plants his flag firmly on either side of the debate. Mostly because that doesn’t really matter.
Even if Rollo and Ingrid are meant to be symbols they are also, more importantly, fully fleshed out characters and as readers we care about them and what happens to them throughout the book.
Once I understood the basic plot points of the book I thought I was getting prepared for something like The Shining set in a pillow fort instead of a haunted hotel. I was wrong. Even though that does sound kind of batshit great, what Revert does with this setting and his characters is far better than that.
Despite its fantastic setting and surreal tone, the book isn’t about giving you answers regarding how this world and the blanket fort come to be. Likewise, the book also isn’t really about parading around a menagerie of weird ideas just to dazzle the reader with its own exotic imagination. No, this book uses its unusual trappings to explore how men and women in love interact with one another in a startlingly fresh way.
It uses the absurdity and alienness of this little vacuum world to lure you into a character study about what a relationship is when stripped of all outside influences. How this can foster the intimacy of an arrangement but then quickly cripple and poison the connection between two people.
Basal Ganglia is a book about what happens when the sanctuary and fortress you’ve built in your mind to keep you safe also end up preventing anyone from getting close.
And how that can destroy you.
Because, inextricably, part of who we are is the people who are close to us.
I first became aware of Matthew Revert from his images. The man has designed some of the most elegantly decimated cover art for fiction that I’ve ever seen.
The first time I saw his work it was gracing covers for a slew of books published by Lazy Fascist Press, a consortium of high-minded weirdoes who write interesting and strange fiction. I was very taken by his cover art for other authors but when I found out that he also wrote his own fiction (and that it was damn good) I was actually kind of pissed off.
No one person should horde all that talent.
It isn’t fair to the rest of us and it just makes Revert too goddamn powerful as a creator. Hopefully there’s something he isn’t good at. I mean even Prince can’t play brass. And no matter how good Revert is he can’t be better than Prince.
(Early Prince, natch)
When reading Basal Ganglia you begin to understand that Revert holds a mastery over words as well as images. His prose is as carefully chaotic and ornately orchestrated as his cover art.
Much of the writing here feels philosophical, almost platonic in its tone,
“It is in the darkness of our secrets that our personality is born.”
There is a quavering, syncopated, beautifully wounded heart that powers this work. It hides itself poorly for all its cunning and by the end of the book you’re allowed to witness it in all of its tattered and fragile glory.
At one point Revert writes, “A new symphony drowning out the old.” That’s how this book feels. Like an invitation to a new world of music. To quote one of the aforesaid Prince’s musical idols Jimi Hendrix:
“So to you I shall put an end. Then you’ll never hear surf music again.”
[Basal Ganglia is published by Lazy Fascist Press and you can purchase at Amazon.]
Read
February 11, 2014This is an ambitious book, very strange and full of interesting ideas. I'm not sure it's to my taste--I don't mind difficult language, but it seems to get in the way a little here, and I found myself wishing Revert had gone with a more subdued style, and let the reader discover the themes of the narrative rather than relying on a sort of disembodied analytic voice.
Still, I don't know if there's ever been a more thorough portrait of isolation and the impossible distance between two people... people who can't possibly belong in the world, and live (alone with themselves, with each other) together in a massive pillow fortress shaped like the human brain.
This is a deeply, intensely sad book, and I think that's what stuck with me more than anything. It's going to divide readers, but people who love it will love it very much.
Still, I don't know if there's ever been a more thorough portrait of isolation and the impossible distance between two people... people who can't possibly belong in the world, and live (alone with themselves, with each other) together in a massive pillow fortress shaped like the human brain.
This is a deeply, intensely sad book, and I think that's what stuck with me more than anything. It's going to divide readers, but people who love it will love it very much.
September 24, 2014
Amazing. It reads like an instruction manual for loneliness. A tense, difficult read that is equally beautiful and stark in its prose. I have never read anything like it.
March 28, 2020
From the source of all sources, Wikipedia:
* * * *
In the past, I have been able to separate my favorite of a given type of media with the best of a certain type of media. My favorite was something that I would return to with the same emotional impact. It may not be the best thing I read/watched/listened to, but it would hit me at my core all the time. This is why Babe AND Babe:Pig In The City were at the top of my list of all time favorite movies ... and explains how Pig In The City fell from that list (even though I still claim that it is the better movie in terms of style, theme, camerawork, script and execution of the two).
In short, a favorite can be flawed. A "best" should not be flawed (or flawed in the most minor of ways).
* * * *
What does it mean to be stuck in a routine? Not just scared to leave this routine that you've started for whatever reason, but so entrenched in the habits that it has erased your identity. A routine that has become all you know and all you believe (again, I separate the two).
What happens when someone who has become a part of this routine breaks it?
* * * *
I've been reading the purple Bizarro Starter Kit. All I wrote for Matthew Revert's three short stories was "Inspired. I think I found a new favorite author." This was unfair to the quality of the stories I read. It was unfair to the fact that "Concentration Tongue" may have replaced "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" as my favorite short story PERIOD. Or how I was so emotionally affected while reading "The Great Headphone Wank" that I had to set it aside while reading the story for five or ten minute breaks before I could go on. That even "A Million Versions of Right" shocked me to the core and relayed some emotional truth that ejaculating mustachioed tilers should not.
It was with this in the background that I sought out a Revert book (and I hoped to find Million Versions of Right ... but that is out of print now :-( ). I found Basal Ganglia at a giant indie bookstore. It was all they had.
* * * *
Rollo and Ingrid are two names that are given just because the reader needs names to distinguish the characters. They barely remember their names and don't remember their past at all. They have spent the last couple of decades constructing a giant pillow fort underground. A fort with rooms named after the different parts of the brain. This is not just any pillow fort. Think of the coolest treehouse you can imagine and put it underground with blankets and pillows instead of wood ... you've got this construction. It has pipes, it has some semblance of electricity, it has a waste system ...
But this all matters not.
* * * *
I took home this book and, while driving, started looking at the first few pages. It's a rare thing to do, read and drive at the same time (stopped at red lights only and looking up after every paragraph). This book forced me to do exactly that.
That night, I sat and read the first half of the book on the couch in a mixture of fascination and sadness and frustration and anger and identification. Much like "The Great Headphone Wank," this was a book I had to stop reading for a while. I gave it a day's break.
* * * *
What matters is that Rollo and Ingrid were in a relationship that had fallen apart. They were going through the motions - eating dinner together and sometimes sleeping together - while not truly happy about them. They were just habits that their bodies were trained to do. Habits that their minds were beginning to fight against.
Ingrid breaks the monotony with the announcement: "I want a baby."
And the catalyst for change throws both for a loop that the rest of the book explores in depth.
* * * *
And much like the book, the past meets the present. Rollo and Ingrid find themselves, and in doing so I found a new way of looking at relationships. How much of ourselves do we give up in any pairing? How much of ourselves do we demand our partner share and take as their own? Basal Ganglia presents these questions and ties them to an subtextual discussion on gender roles and stereotypes and how the past forms us even when we forget it.
Much like "Concentration Tongue" and "Great Headphone Wank," Matthew Revert takes an absurd situation and forces so much depth and meaning into it that the situation sinks into the background.
And the book became my favorite book of all time.
Yes, this surpasses any possible challengers. The Haunting of Hill House, Griffin and Sabine, House of Leaves, Deathbird Stories, Dhalgren ... all of these are left behind. In fact, not since House of Leaves have I been so affected by the written word. So there is one question left to answer:
Why only 4 stars?
Well, I recognize the flaws in the writing. I do love a good hit-you-over-the-head symbol/metaphor ... but there is such a thing as trying too hard. There is a sense of Revert still exploring the most effective way to write philosophical tomes here, and it is very heavy-handed. While I loved a great deal of the questions and ruminations posed ... there were times when I was pulled out of the work by the Ishmael-esque way the work is laid out.
The difference between that horrific talking-apehead book and this brilliant story is ... there is actually a story here. That there is a lot more "showing" in Basal Ganglia.
It's just that there's a lot of telling too.
[2020 reread]
What does it take to realize something has gone wrong?
Who will be the person to point out the errors? How will they do so? What will they reveal about themselves in the process?
I lack the feelings to fully absorb the emotions of this book during the COVID-19 quarantine, and yet I still feel the truth of the words. I wonder if the ending is as hopeful as it felt 6 years ago. I think it is the beginning of the end instead of the end of a beginning. What a book!
The basal ganglia are associated with a variety of functions including: control of voluntary motor movements, procedural learning, routine behaviors or "habits" such as bruxism, eye movements, cognition and emotion. Currently, popular theories implicate the basal ganglia primarily in action selection; that is, it helps determine the decision of which of several possible behaviors to execute at any given time. In more specific terms, the basal ganglia's primary function is likely to control and regulate activities of the motor and premotor cortical areas so that voluntary movements can be performed smoothly.
* * * *
In the past, I have been able to separate my favorite of a given type of media with the best of a certain type of media. My favorite was something that I would return to with the same emotional impact. It may not be the best thing I read/watched/listened to, but it would hit me at my core all the time. This is why Babe AND Babe:Pig In The City were at the top of my list of all time favorite movies ... and explains how Pig In The City fell from that list (even though I still claim that it is the better movie in terms of style, theme, camerawork, script and execution of the two).
In short, a favorite can be flawed. A "best" should not be flawed (or flawed in the most minor of ways).
* * * *
What does it mean to be stuck in a routine? Not just scared to leave this routine that you've started for whatever reason, but so entrenched in the habits that it has erased your identity. A routine that has become all you know and all you believe (again, I separate the two).
What happens when someone who has become a part of this routine breaks it?
* * * *
I've been reading the purple Bizarro Starter Kit. All I wrote for Matthew Revert's three short stories was "Inspired. I think I found a new favorite author." This was unfair to the quality of the stories I read. It was unfair to the fact that "Concentration Tongue" may have replaced "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" as my favorite short story PERIOD. Or how I was so emotionally affected while reading "The Great Headphone Wank" that I had to set it aside while reading the story for five or ten minute breaks before I could go on. That even "A Million Versions of Right" shocked me to the core and relayed some emotional truth that ejaculating mustachioed tilers should not.
It was with this in the background that I sought out a Revert book (and I hoped to find Million Versions of Right ... but that is out of print now :-( ). I found Basal Ganglia at a giant indie bookstore. It was all they had.
* * * *
Rollo and Ingrid are two names that are given just because the reader needs names to distinguish the characters. They barely remember their names and don't remember their past at all. They have spent the last couple of decades constructing a giant pillow fort underground. A fort with rooms named after the different parts of the brain. This is not just any pillow fort. Think of the coolest treehouse you can imagine and put it underground with blankets and pillows instead of wood ... you've got this construction. It has pipes, it has some semblance of electricity, it has a waste system ...
But this all matters not.
* * * *
I took home this book and, while driving, started looking at the first few pages. It's a rare thing to do, read and drive at the same time (stopped at red lights only and looking up after every paragraph). This book forced me to do exactly that.
That night, I sat and read the first half of the book on the couch in a mixture of fascination and sadness and frustration and anger and identification. Much like "The Great Headphone Wank," this was a book I had to stop reading for a while. I gave it a day's break.
* * * *
What matters is that Rollo and Ingrid were in a relationship that had fallen apart. They were going through the motions - eating dinner together and sometimes sleeping together - while not truly happy about them. They were just habits that their bodies were trained to do. Habits that their minds were beginning to fight against.
Ingrid breaks the monotony with the announcement: "I want a baby."
And the catalyst for change throws both for a loop that the rest of the book explores in depth.
* * * *
And much like the book, the past meets the present. Rollo and Ingrid find themselves, and in doing so I found a new way of looking at relationships. How much of ourselves do we give up in any pairing? How much of ourselves do we demand our partner share and take as their own? Basal Ganglia presents these questions and ties them to an subtextual discussion on gender roles and stereotypes and how the past forms us even when we forget it.
Much like "Concentration Tongue" and "Great Headphone Wank," Matthew Revert takes an absurd situation and forces so much depth and meaning into it that the situation sinks into the background.
And the book became my favorite book of all time.
Yes, this surpasses any possible challengers. The Haunting of Hill House, Griffin and Sabine, House of Leaves, Deathbird Stories, Dhalgren ... all of these are left behind. In fact, not since House of Leaves have I been so affected by the written word. So there is one question left to answer:
Why only 4 stars?
Well, I recognize the flaws in the writing. I do love a good hit-you-over-the-head symbol/metaphor ... but there is such a thing as trying too hard. There is a sense of Revert still exploring the most effective way to write philosophical tomes here, and it is very heavy-handed. While I loved a great deal of the questions and ruminations posed ... there were times when I was pulled out of the work by the Ishmael-esque way the work is laid out.
The difference between that horrific talking-apehead book and this brilliant story is ... there is actually a story here. That there is a lot more "showing" in Basal Ganglia.
It's just that there's a lot of telling too.
[2020 reread]
What does it take to realize something has gone wrong?
Who will be the person to point out the errors? How will they do so? What will they reveal about themselves in the process?
I lack the feelings to fully absorb the emotions of this book during the COVID-19 quarantine, and yet I still feel the truth of the words. I wonder if the ending is as hopeful as it felt 6 years ago. I think it is the beginning of the end instead of the end of a beginning. What a book!
July 7, 2021
Surreal, beautiful. Haunting.
September 19, 2014
Basal Ganglia is a strikingly original story of the shifting relationship and interaction between Rollo and Ingrid, a long-term couple (sort of, I guess) who live within a large cloth fort they've built themselves over many years, and which they busy themselves with observing, maintaining and expanding.
Much of the emotional drama is surreal and abstracted, yet Revert presents it with the kind of human-scale focus -- on desires, frustrations about whether to have a child, confusions about possibly growing apart, and paranoia about how things might be changing within the fort and the relationship -- that make it seem not just possible, but real.
Unusual both in feel and in style, a sustained effort of strikingly off-kilter narrative, Basal Ganglia is sensitive and intelligent, while remaining resolutely weird from beginning to end. It's a daring work of fiction, yet manages to sustain a familiar-seeming emotional connection sufficient to pull the reader through the story.
Very well done, and highly recommended for readers open to the unorthodox, though readers who enjoy only the familiar and comfortable should probably steer well clear.
Much of the emotional drama is surreal and abstracted, yet Revert presents it with the kind of human-scale focus -- on desires, frustrations about whether to have a child, confusions about possibly growing apart, and paranoia about how things might be changing within the fort and the relationship -- that make it seem not just possible, but real.
Unusual both in feel and in style, a sustained effort of strikingly off-kilter narrative, Basal Ganglia is sensitive and intelligent, while remaining resolutely weird from beginning to end. It's a daring work of fiction, yet manages to sustain a familiar-seeming emotional connection sufficient to pull the reader through the story.
Very well done, and highly recommended for readers open to the unorthodox, though readers who enjoy only the familiar and comfortable should probably steer well clear.
July 4, 2022
Sometimes a book comes along with the power to change a reader's perspective on both the world as a whole and how people within it relate to one another. This is that book. There was so much to this story that it's hard to know how to even begin to break it down. The metaphors were beautiful and haunting, the emotions were concrete and painful, and the writing was nothing short of gorgeous. Everything about the writing—from the tangible emotions to the neverending analogies to the overwhelming obsession of the characters to the unsaid parallels drawn between every sentence—all felt weighted with the sort of deeper meaning and introspection that a novel like this demands be explored. The stark juxtaposition between a fear and uncertainty of others, and the empty desolation of loneliness is something I think can resonate on a personal level with every single reader. The safety of distance and the protection of self-isolation versus the desperate need to not be forgotten or left behind was almost painful to read at times. The way that Rollo and Ingrid are tangled up together, the way their identities are so detached from one another but still so intertwined, and the way they had reached a point of existing separately but still defining themselves by their awareness of the other, was somehow both tragic and hopeful in its execution. There were more layers to this book than there were layers in their pillow fort.
Read
January 24, 2015The story is actually pretty cute, after it's all ingested, whichever way it ends up getting in. Excellent use of symbolism, blurry lines of identity/memory/desire. The sort of thema with which to turn out a novice lover of books into the established sort who intuitively knows when to skim and when to reread.
July 12, 2014
This was phenomenally written. Profound and absolutely amazing. I think anyone who has ever been in a long term relationship would be touched by this book. It gave words to the deep and scratching animal that can sometimes live inside love. Emotions I have felt, but never would have been able to express. Bravo Matthew Revert!
October 7, 2014
A true journey into the human psyche, Matthew Revert's "Basal Ganglia" ia a difficult book to read and fully grasp its meaning. A pessimistic look into relantionships and the very human existence, this is a book to be analyzed and taught at colleges. This book makes you feel, makes you think, and it will go down in History as a Bizarro Classic, at the very least.
January 21, 2018
Revert always has some of the most original plots of any author out there. In Basal Ganglia, Rollo and Ingrid have devoted there lives to the maintenance of a pillow fort they have spent 25 years building. Their is no outside life. Just the pillow fort. Inside it their old lives mean nothing. Communcation between the two is sparse. The writing here is outstanding. Its just over 100 pages but it does take some time to finish it because each sentence and paragraph is so heavy.
August 3, 2018
Weird book. Powerful book. Complicated, taxing book. But really worth the read. Especially regarding the final twist, and the underlying message. Also, the elephant in the room...
September 5, 2018
I felt this really works only when read as if recited in a certain slow incantatory rhythm.
April 27, 2014
There is an essential sweetness that comes through in Revert's writing, and that’s not always the case with writers. May of us hide our character, sweet or sour, behind our creations, but there’s a nakedness to Revert’s work that I’ve always admired, a vulnerability and whimsy that tempers the absurdity, the darkness tinged with a defiant pink.
So Basal Ganglia is a relationship novel. It takes place in a pillow fort, the kind you make when you’re a kid using couch cushions and quilts pegged to chairs, and it’s awesome. Except this pillow fort is underground and its labyrinthine passages are twisted enough to lose your mind in. The bitter, lactating (don't ask) Rollo maintains its oxygen and waste and heating and cooling using a complex, steam-punkish system of thermodynamics he designs himself, and in which he now invests his whole being. That leaves the other half of the relationship, the bearded Ingrid (told you not to ask), alone for days, scribbling letters she will never send, plotting to conceive a child that can never be.
The underground location of the pillow fort is telling. How does radical childhood escapism transform into a grown-up prison where no one can hear you scream? Revert’s couple is too mired in its own dysfunctional solitude to ask or answer this question. Unable to exist in the real world, Ingrid and Rollo have created a new one in which to rule, until it ends up ruling them. Their only hope lies in the child finally created out of the debris of alienation and despair. But a child is never the solution to a relationship dead and buried, and Revert's denouement is perfect. So radical and twisted and obvious from the start, that at first it seems less entropic then it is. But as everyone knows, the entropy of isolation never decreases, and chaos is just another word for nothing left to lose.
So Basal Ganglia is a relationship novel. It takes place in a pillow fort, the kind you make when you’re a kid using couch cushions and quilts pegged to chairs, and it’s awesome. Except this pillow fort is underground and its labyrinthine passages are twisted enough to lose your mind in. The bitter, lactating (don't ask) Rollo maintains its oxygen and waste and heating and cooling using a complex, steam-punkish system of thermodynamics he designs himself, and in which he now invests his whole being. That leaves the other half of the relationship, the bearded Ingrid (told you not to ask), alone for days, scribbling letters she will never send, plotting to conceive a child that can never be.
The underground location of the pillow fort is telling. How does radical childhood escapism transform into a grown-up prison where no one can hear you scream? Revert’s couple is too mired in its own dysfunctional solitude to ask or answer this question. Unable to exist in the real world, Ingrid and Rollo have created a new one in which to rule, until it ends up ruling them. Their only hope lies in the child finally created out of the debris of alienation and despair. But a child is never the solution to a relationship dead and buried, and Revert's denouement is perfect. So radical and twisted and obvious from the start, that at first it seems less entropic then it is. But as everyone knows, the entropy of isolation never decreases, and chaos is just another word for nothing left to lose.
October 6, 2015
Matthew Revert's BASAL GANGLIA is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. This is not bullshit hyperbole, I think every other writer should read this book and seethe with envy, and every other person needs to read this book. On a pure sentence level from page one onward, it offers some of the best prose I've ever read in my entire life. On a pure emotional level, it is a visceral, heartbreaking journey from start to finish. It is the connection between two people, and the complexities of love shared between those people. It is an exploration of the intricacies of how we harm each other in relationships, our paranoia, what we hide, what goes unsaid, what little is said, the distortion of memory, the ways in which we unlearn things about ourselves and unravel them again in new shapes, languages, and tongues. It's a book I'll be revisiting my entire life.
"Ingrid's mouth closes before she has a chance to whisper 'goodbye.' It is not a word she feels she can live up to. 'Goodbye' us the most dishonest word language has conjured. It is a muscle we flex to intimidate and impress. A word without flesh. Goodbye is simply a word proceeding hello. To truly leave another, one must never seek contact again. Only death is goodbye."
"Ingrid's mouth closes before she has a chance to whisper 'goodbye.' It is not a word she feels she can live up to. 'Goodbye' us the most dishonest word language has conjured. It is a muscle we flex to intimidate and impress. A word without flesh. Goodbye is simply a word proceeding hello. To truly leave another, one must never seek contact again. Only death is goodbye."
July 25, 2014
The premise of this book is very interesting. Revert writing style is unusual and provocative but there were some notable weak spots. There are medium long stretches of mundane philosophizing that I felt did not add much to the novel. Overall a good novel, but i think more importantly between his warped imagination, ability to build atmosphere and disdain for convention, Basal Ganglia shows inklings that Reverts future novels could be very very good. I look forward to following his progress.
January 13, 2014
Basal Ganglia is one of those rare finds. A book that stays with you well after the read. Steeped in language so complex and deep that one is forced to put on the brakes and take a look around.
But the view is magnificent.
As with most of my reviews, I don't give too much away, but you can guarantee that if I leave any kind of comment, the book is worth your time.
Pick this one up. Now.
But the view is magnificent.
As with most of my reviews, I don't give too much away, but you can guarantee that if I leave any kind of comment, the book is worth your time.
Pick this one up. Now.
August 11, 2014
This book is wonderful and brilliant, captivating and profound. It caught my interest first because I love neurology and second because the plot is so ludicrous that it would have to be either masterful or a joke. It is, indeed, masterful.
Basal Ganglia is the kind of book that makes me say, "I want to write like that." I'll be seeking out more of his work, and soon.
Basal Ganglia is the kind of book that makes me say, "I want to write like that." I'll be seeking out more of his work, and soon.
February 6, 2016
This book was pretty good. Reminded me a lot of Kobo Abe. Deals with issues of isolation, communication, identity (Kobo Abe's favorite issues), and gender. It can be read as a story of couple who found themselves so different from the world that they isolated themselves from it, and drifted apart. It can also be read as a story about conflicting gender identities within a person. 3.5 stars.
March 28, 2014
This book was beautiful and unsettling. It's still haunting me... teasing thoughts out of my brain slowly. It's the kind of story that stays with you and you'll find yourself thinking about it without realizing it. This is a quality particular to this author's work. Just brilliant.
June 9, 2014
One of the deepest bizarro reads I've ever experienced. The author's choice language is unnervingly mechanical and precise; many paragraphs deserve to be highlighted, examined, extracted, and mentally framed. I could not help but be entranced. I will definitely be reading more by Revert.
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