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The Familiar #2
Into the Forest
The Familiar, Volume 1 Wherein the cat is found . . .
The Familiar, Volume 2 Wherein the cat is hungry . . .
From the universally acclaimed, genre-busting author of House of Leaves comes the second volume of The Familiar, a “novel [which] goes beyond the experimental into the visionary, creating a language and style that expands the horizon of meaning . . . hint[ing] at an evolved form of literature.”*
In The Familiar, Volume 2: Into the Forest, the lives of the disparate and dynamic nine characters introduced in “One Rainy Day in May” begin to intersect in inexplicable ways, finding harmonies and echoes in each other. What once seemed remote and disconnected draws closer—slowly, steadily—toward something inevitable. . . . At the center of it all is Xanther, a twelve-year-old girl, for whom the world around her seems to be opening, exposing doors and windows, visions and sounds, questions and ideas previously unknown. With each passing day, she begins to glimpse something she does not understand but unequivocally craves—the only thing that will bring her relief and keep her new friend alive.
The Familiar, Volume 2 Wherein the cat is hungry . . .
From the universally acclaimed, genre-busting author of House of Leaves comes the second volume of The Familiar, a “novel [which] goes beyond the experimental into the visionary, creating a language and style that expands the horizon of meaning . . . hint[ing] at an evolved form of literature.”*
In The Familiar, Volume 2: Into the Forest, the lives of the disparate and dynamic nine characters introduced in “One Rainy Day in May” begin to intersect in inexplicable ways, finding harmonies and echoes in each other. What once seemed remote and disconnected draws closer—slowly, steadily—toward something inevitable. . . . At the center of it all is Xanther, a twelve-year-old girl, for whom the world around her seems to be opening, exposing doors and windows, visions and sounds, questions and ideas previously unknown. With each passing day, she begins to glimpse something she does not understand but unequivocally craves—the only thing that will bring her relief and keep her new friend alive.
880 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 27, 2015
107 people are currently reading
4679 people want to read
About the author
Mark Z. Danielewski
18 books8,061 followersMark Z. Danielewski is an American author best known for his books House of Leaves, Only Revolutions, The Fifty Year Sword, The Little Blue Kite, and The Familiar series.
Danielewski studied English Literature at Yale. He then decided to move to Berkeley, California, where he took a summer program in Latin at the University of California, Berkeley. He also spent time in Paris, preoccupied mostly with writing.
In the early 1990s, he pursued graduate studies at the USC School of Cinema-Television. He later served as an assistant editor and worked on sound for Derrida, a documentary based on the life of the Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher Jacques Derrida.
His second novel, Only Revolutions, was released in 2006. The novel was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award.
His novel The Fifty Year Sword was released in the Netherlands in 2005. A new version with stitched illustrations was released in the United States 2012 (including a limited-edition release featuring a latched box that held the book). On Halloween 2010-2012, Danielewski "conducted" staged readings of the book at the REDCAT Theater inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Each year was different and included features such as large-scale shadows, music, and performances from actors such as Betsy Brandt (Breaking Bad).
On May 12, 2015, he released the first volume, The Familiar (Volume 1): One Rainy Day in May in his announced 27-volume series The Familiar. The story "concerns a 12-year-old girl who finds a kitten..." The second volume, The Familiar (Volume 2): Into the Forest was released on Oct. 27, 2015, The Familiar (Volume 3): Honeysuckle & Pain came out June 14, 2016, and The Familiar (Volume 4): Hades arrived in bookstores on Feb. 7, 2017, and The Familiar (Volume 5): Redwood was released on Halloween 2017.
His latest release, The Little Blue Kite, is out now.
Quick Facts
He is the son of Polish avant-garde film director Tad Danielewski and the brother of singer and songwriter Annie Decatur Danielewski, a.k.a. Poe.
House of Leaves, Danielewski's first novel, has gained a considerable cult following. In 2000, Danielewski toured with his sister across America at Borders Books and Music locations, promoting Poe’s album Haunted, which reflects elements of House of Leaves.
Danielewski's work is characterized by experimental choices in form, such as intricate and multi-layered narratives and typographical variation.
In 2015, his piece Thrown, a reflection on Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2, appeared on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Official "Yarn + Ink" apparel inspired by his books House of Leaves and The Familiar is now available through his official website, Amazon and Etsy.
His latest short story, "There's a Place for You" was released on www.markzdanielewski.com in August 2020.
Read more on his Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z....
Danielewski studied English Literature at Yale. He then decided to move to Berkeley, California, where he took a summer program in Latin at the University of California, Berkeley. He also spent time in Paris, preoccupied mostly with writing.
In the early 1990s, he pursued graduate studies at the USC School of Cinema-Television. He later served as an assistant editor and worked on sound for Derrida, a documentary based on the life of the Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher Jacques Derrida.
His second novel, Only Revolutions, was released in 2006. The novel was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award.
His novel The Fifty Year Sword was released in the Netherlands in 2005. A new version with stitched illustrations was released in the United States 2012 (including a limited-edition release featuring a latched box that held the book). On Halloween 2010-2012, Danielewski "conducted" staged readings of the book at the REDCAT Theater inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Each year was different and included features such as large-scale shadows, music, and performances from actors such as Betsy Brandt (Breaking Bad).
On May 12, 2015, he released the first volume, The Familiar (Volume 1): One Rainy Day in May in his announced 27-volume series The Familiar. The story "concerns a 12-year-old girl who finds a kitten..." The second volume, The Familiar (Volume 2): Into the Forest was released on Oct. 27, 2015, The Familiar (Volume 3): Honeysuckle & Pain came out June 14, 2016, and The Familiar (Volume 4): Hades arrived in bookstores on Feb. 7, 2017, and The Familiar (Volume 5): Redwood was released on Halloween 2017.
His latest release, The Little Blue Kite, is out now.
Quick Facts
He is the son of Polish avant-garde film director Tad Danielewski and the brother of singer and songwriter Annie Decatur Danielewski, a.k.a. Poe.
House of Leaves, Danielewski's first novel, has gained a considerable cult following. In 2000, Danielewski toured with his sister across America at Borders Books and Music locations, promoting Poe’s album Haunted, which reflects elements of House of Leaves.
Danielewski's work is characterized by experimental choices in form, such as intricate and multi-layered narratives and typographical variation.
In 2015, his piece Thrown, a reflection on Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2, appeared on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Official "Yarn + Ink" apparel inspired by his books House of Leaves and The Familiar is now available through his official website, Amazon and Etsy.
His latest short story, "There's a Place for You" was released on www.markzdanielewski.com in August 2020.
Read more on his Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z....
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 203 reviews
November 20, 2015
fuck off fuck off fuck OFF with that ending if the next volume isn't out in like 1 day I don't know how I can continue to live
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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
May 25, 2017
I freaking love Mark Danielewski. His creativity and imagination are staggering.
This one picks up right where the first one left off and we learn a bit more about our characters. I really like the story that is unfolding with Xanther and her crazy parents. I really like the orb characters too but everytime I think I understand them I end up more confused. I'm not going to wait so long between vols to read the next one. That was a mistake as I was really fuzzy on some of the lesser characters.
This one picks up right where the first one left off and we learn a bit more about our characters. I really like the story that is unfolding with Xanther and her crazy parents. I really like the orb characters too but everytime I think I understand them I end up more confused. I'm not going to wait so long between vols to read the next one. That was a mistake as I was really fuzzy on some of the lesser characters.
December 31, 2017
Volume 2 Into The Forest continues in similar vein to A Rainy Day In May. The six stories are still largely self contained, and there is very much a feeling of meeting the characters; acclimatise to the pace of the narrative.
As this marathon starts to develop my reading experience in volume 2 changed subtlety
* Jingjing. The Singaporian section is the toughest read, and also intriguing. Danielewski doesn't just play at local dialect, he fully embraces "Singlish", and to get the full value of these sections I found the 'Coxford Singlish Dictionary' (online), very helpful, meaningful and amusing. Jingjing's musings in the Fort Canning Spice Garden, the legacy of Sir Stamford Raffles, is particularly evocative.
*Isandorno. The section set in Mexico is now starting to develop a brooding, sinister feel. I was immediately reminded of Roberto Bolano's 2666 ; the sense of self containment, mystery, and malice promises an interesting journey ahead. The writing is Kafkaesque as our protagonist responds to unexpected and horrific turns of events with steely sang froid.
It is said of Isandorno " You don't look like you answer to fear"(168)
* Shnorhk. Everything is against him. Should he throw in his lot with Uber (he is a taxi driver)!! The Armenian sections afford a welcome degree of light relief.
The core of The Familiar remains the family dynamic that exists in the interaction of Anwar and Astair Ibrahim, and their daughter Xanther. The reader is, I suspect, being lulled into thinking that relative normality reigns.
* The Wizard. This section is the most bizarre. Rather than try to find logic, it's best to let the fantastical emerge. Cas's allies real names are unknown to us, but their codes more than hint at great ambition: Circe, Artemis, Thanatos, Treebeard, Merkin, Pythia, Lilith and Endoria. Antiquity awaits us on the far horizon?
And finally, there are the Narcons; a back to the future, other worldly, perspective that is used by Danielewski to engage the reader at those times that the stories start to career wildly out of control. Fabulous.
Now, on to Part 3, Honeysuckle & Pain
As this marathon starts to develop my reading experience in volume 2 changed subtlety
* Jingjing. The Singaporian section is the toughest read, and also intriguing. Danielewski doesn't just play at local dialect, he fully embraces "Singlish", and to get the full value of these sections I found the 'Coxford Singlish Dictionary' (online), very helpful, meaningful and amusing. Jingjing's musings in the Fort Canning Spice Garden, the legacy of Sir Stamford Raffles, is particularly evocative.
*Isandorno. The section set in Mexico is now starting to develop a brooding, sinister feel. I was immediately reminded of Roberto Bolano's 2666 ; the sense of self containment, mystery, and malice promises an interesting journey ahead. The writing is Kafkaesque as our protagonist responds to unexpected and horrific turns of events with steely sang froid.
It is said of Isandorno " You don't look like you answer to fear"(168)
* Shnorhk. Everything is against him. Should he throw in his lot with Uber (he is a taxi driver)!! The Armenian sections afford a welcome degree of light relief.
The core of The Familiar remains the family dynamic that exists in the interaction of Anwar and Astair Ibrahim, and their daughter Xanther. The reader is, I suspect, being lulled into thinking that relative normality reigns.
* The Wizard. This section is the most bizarre. Rather than try to find logic, it's best to let the fantastical emerge. Cas's allies real names are unknown to us, but their codes more than hint at great ambition: Circe, Artemis, Thanatos, Treebeard, Merkin, Pythia, Lilith and Endoria. Antiquity awaits us on the far horizon?
And finally, there are the Narcons; a back to the future, other worldly, perspective that is used by Danielewski to engage the reader at those times that the stories start to career wildly out of control. Fabulous.
Now, on to Part 3, Honeysuckle & Pain
Read
December 27, 2016A novel in a series. A series of novels. A serie(ou)s novel. I don't have a clue about the protocol for reviewing these. But I can say that I'm in for the long=haul. Something pleasant about polishing off an 880 page novel in two days. Something perhaps lite=weight in the manner I imagine graphic novels being lite=weight ; a pleasant entertainment ;; but without a thought that one's time is spuriously spent. And why not say it?, the book=design element here, heavy as it is (overwhelming?) is rather a pleasure. Take your time, Z=man, spread out on those pages there and just dawdle or doodle or do just whatever it is you're doing. My subscription is paid.
December 6, 2015
As I got into this, I kept thinking about reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. There are some shared approaches there, at least in the world of Xanther, where some fantastical things happen but that isn't the focus, they just ARE and you don't know WHY but you keep reading in hopes it will sort itself out.
I was more ready for the multiple parts after reading The Familiar #1, but I wish I had sat and read this in one sitting like I did with the first one. By the time I went back to this I feel I had lost some of the threads.
I like how Xanther's story and character are growing, as well as learning more about her (neurotic) parents. My favorite story line has to do with the orb - although the more sections we have about those characters the less I understand what they are up to. In the first volume I thought they were rogue scientists in the desert but now they seem to have friends, and maybe they are terrorists? Bombers? Drug dealers?
And was that what I thought it was, going into the fryer?
Someone got mad at me in Facebook for "spoiling" when I posted a picture that said the cat was spooky. The was the overstatement of the universe, underlying from the beginning. Shrug.
I was more ready for the multiple parts after reading The Familiar #1, but I wish I had sat and read this in one sitting like I did with the first one. By the time I went back to this I feel I had lost some of the threads.
I like how Xanther's story and character are growing, as well as learning more about her (neurotic) parents. My favorite story line has to do with the orb - although the more sections we have about those characters the less I understand what they are up to. In the first volume I thought they were rogue scientists in the desert but now they seem to have friends, and maybe they are terrorists? Bombers? Drug dealers?
And was that what I thought it was, going into the fryer?
Someone got mad at me in Facebook for "spoiling" when I posted a picture that said the cat was spooky. The was the overstatement of the universe, underlying from the beginning. Shrug.
August 28, 2017
When discussing The Familiar, Mark Z. Danielewski has referred to it as a “remediation of the television series.” With that in mind, we read the book’s characters and chapters in terms of seasons and episodes, suggesting that Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May is the pilot episode of the series, while Volume 5: Redwood is being pitched as the “season finale.” We’ll get a better understanding of what a “season” is once we get through Redwood, but in terms of Volume 2: Into the Forest, MZD offers the first really deep dive into the story. See, in TV, a pilot is used to establish the aesthetics of the show: characters, details, tone, in essence, a good pilot teaches the viewer how to watch the show, or, in this case, how to read the book. A great example of this is the first episode of Breaking Bad which teaches you how the series will work with its use of flash-forward to plant questions in the viewers’ minds, then moves back in time to take us on the journey to get to that point. The Familiar operates similarly. There are no time jumps (in fact, time is very meticulously working chronologically), but it sets you up with the rules of the book early on. While it’s hard to wrap your head around at first, One Rainy Day in May does actually provide you will all of the information you will need to understand and access this idiosyncratic world, setting the chessboard, so to speak, while establishing the characters with great economy (this may seem ironic as the books are all 880 pages each, but the reality here is the word count is roughly 250-300 pages). Things are draped all over the pages of Vols. 1 & 2 that come to bear fuller fruit in later entries. They sit here, almost unbeknownst to you that they are ripening for harvest. In this way, your keen readership is steeped with rewarding moments throughout.
Picking up Into the Forest, we come equipped now with readerly/viewerly expectations—the basic plot is still nebulous, but the seed is planted. The characters are all introduced, however, we’re clueless to how they’re all connected and why they’re all sharing these pages. So it’s the work of the second episode to start giving us the information to start drawing those lines, whether literal or metaphorical or symbolic or thematic. And that’s precisely what we get here in the second book: the themes start emerging from the fog, creating linkages that are more and more clear. Vague connexions that make you question their tenability and perhaps question your own levels of paranoia (are you the one who’s drawing the lines from textual elision? Or is MZD guiding you to these conclusions in such a careful and subtle way as to make you question yourself?). This task of setting themes and elevating the stakes of the series gives Volume 2 added depth, weight, and density that may seem lacking on a first read of Volume 1. The darkness of the series is setting in here; where Volume 1 was drenched in rain, Volume 2 hides danger like snakes in the grass, waiting to strike.
We also get to delight in some classic TV tropes in this volume: cliffhangers, action punctuated with violence, sex and relationships, plot development that adds and deepens questions rather than answering the ones prevailing. The book thickens with the density of its themes and ideas, framing the enormous scope of the work, or rather, multiplying its scope to show you that this book will have something more, something new to say with each entry in the series. By the time you have finished the second book, you start to realize how vast and complex it will be. With the hooks of plot and the intrigue of the book’s ideas and complexities, I believe that reading through these first two books will grab you and pull you under its tantalizing allure. It seems like a lot to ask you to read two 880-page novels to “get” the series, I know, but again, these read like lightning and reward the reader over and over as the story unfolds and blooms. Soon, you too will be salivating for the next episode.
My reviews for other books in the series below:
Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May
Volume 3: Honeysuckle & Pain
Volume 4: Hades
Picking up Into the Forest, we come equipped now with readerly/viewerly expectations—the basic plot is still nebulous, but the seed is planted. The characters are all introduced, however, we’re clueless to how they’re all connected and why they’re all sharing these pages. So it’s the work of the second episode to start giving us the information to start drawing those lines, whether literal or metaphorical or symbolic or thematic. And that’s precisely what we get here in the second book: the themes start emerging from the fog, creating linkages that are more and more clear. Vague connexions that make you question their tenability and perhaps question your own levels of paranoia (are you the one who’s drawing the lines from textual elision? Or is MZD guiding you to these conclusions in such a careful and subtle way as to make you question yourself?). This task of setting themes and elevating the stakes of the series gives Volume 2 added depth, weight, and density that may seem lacking on a first read of Volume 1. The darkness of the series is setting in here; where Volume 1 was drenched in rain, Volume 2 hides danger like snakes in the grass, waiting to strike.
We also get to delight in some classic TV tropes in this volume: cliffhangers, action punctuated with violence, sex and relationships, plot development that adds and deepens questions rather than answering the ones prevailing. The book thickens with the density of its themes and ideas, framing the enormous scope of the work, or rather, multiplying its scope to show you that this book will have something more, something new to say with each entry in the series. By the time you have finished the second book, you start to realize how vast and complex it will be. With the hooks of plot and the intrigue of the book’s ideas and complexities, I believe that reading through these first two books will grab you and pull you under its tantalizing allure. It seems like a lot to ask you to read two 880-page novels to “get” the series, I know, but again, these read like lightning and reward the reader over and over as the story unfolds and blooms. Soon, you too will be salivating for the next episode.
My reviews for other books in the series below:
Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May
Volume 3: Honeysuckle & Pain
Volume 4: Hades
May 7, 2017
A seamless transition from the first book, Volume 2 picks up literally right where One Rainy Day in May ends. I was pleased to find that the rich writing continued and that this was still not your typical read. I enjoyed taking notes, putting pieces together and tying things back to Volume 1.
Before I get more into Volume 2, let me preface this with read Volume 1 before you read this review. This volume proved to be another great discussion. We get further development of our main characters and are able to see how the story starts to shape together. What I appreciated was getting to know them all in more detail, the interesting ties between them, and the further mysteries and solving of some mysteries.
My favorite part of the books related to Xanther and I also really enjoyed Cas' story and unraveling more information about
I struggle with reviewing this book because first it's too hard to simplify. Second issue is that I don't want to spoil the fun of discovering things on your own, because after all, that is half the fun. What I am comfortable saying is that this is a giant story and this volume begins the grand design of putting pieces into place. So far both books have been written very strategically with the first book setting the stage of the epic story and Volume 2 beginning to connect the dots. I am looking forward to Volume 3!
Volume 1 review
Before I get more into Volume 2, let me preface this with read Volume 1 before you read this review. This volume proved to be another great discussion. We get further development of our main characters and are able to see how the story starts to shape together. What I appreciated was getting to know them all in more detail, the interesting ties between them, and the further mysteries and solving of some mysteries.
My favorite part of the books related to Xanther and I also really enjoyed Cas' story and unraveling more information about
I struggle with reviewing this book because first it's too hard to simplify. Second issue is that I don't want to spoil the fun of discovering things on your own, because after all, that is half the fun. What I am comfortable saying is that this is a giant story and this volume begins the grand design of putting pieces into place. So far both books have been written very strategically with the first book setting the stage of the epic story and Volume 2 beginning to connect the dots. I am looking forward to Volume 3!
Volume 1 review
December 27, 2017
More of what started in One Rainy Day in May. I think it is probably best to view these books as 800+ page chapters of the same novel rather than as even volumes of a story. This one takes the nine stories introduced in Volume 1 (or Chapter 1 as I think of it) and progresses them (see Jonathan’s review for a good summary: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but starts to ramp things up. It is darker, connections start to emerge between the stories. The things that slightly annoyed me about Volume 1 (ok, the thing, the brackets), is now just part of the way we understand how Astair’s and Anwar’s minds are working. I’m settled in now and signed up for the long haul.
Jonathan’s review above gives a quick overview of the plot lines that are developing. I don’t want to say more here because one the main joys of these books is discovering the stories as they unfold. Alongside that, there is spotting the connections that start to develop. Then, of course, there is the typesetting. In this book, there is also wondering why the motif from Close Encounters of the Third Kind makes an appearance while debugging a computer program.
Reading this book is a more satisfying experience than reading the preceding one. I hope it keeps developing like this because it is a lot of fun to read.
4.5 stars from me. I want to read Volume 3 before I decide to go to 5 stars, which I suspect is what will happen if Danielewski can keep things fresh and keep the story developing.
Jonathan’s review above gives a quick overview of the plot lines that are developing. I don’t want to say more here because one the main joys of these books is discovering the stories as they unfold. Alongside that, there is spotting the connections that start to develop. Then, of course, there is the typesetting. In this book, there is also wondering why the motif from Close Encounters of the Third Kind makes an appearance while debugging a computer program.
Reading this book is a more satisfying experience than reading the preceding one. I hope it keeps developing like this because it is a lot of fun to read.
4.5 stars from me. I want to read Volume 3 before I decide to go to 5 stars, which I suspect is what will happen if Danielewski can keep things fresh and keep the story developing.
August 31, 2017
Part 2 of "The Familiar" deepens your relationship with the characters Danielewski has created. The story itself progresses slowly, but you start to get to know the protagonists more intimately. I could especially relate with Astair this time and always with Xanther.
Really anxious to know how the story will proceed. Have I mentioned that I think Danielewski is a genius? I don't know how he does it, but with his unique stlye in writing he's able to recreate emotional landscapes like no other (at least for me). I don't read his books, I rather feel them.
________
Reread in August 2017.
Reading the series together with the offical The Familiar reading club on Facebook, helped me gain so much more insights into this gargantuan story. And still, it's interesting that even though the plus on information is exciting, the reading experience totally works without it, too. The story just draws you in no matter if you've read it before or not.
Really anxious to know how the story will proceed. Have I mentioned that I think Danielewski is a genius? I don't know how he does it, but with his unique stlye in writing he's able to recreate emotional landscapes like no other (at least for me). I don't read his books, I rather feel them.
________
Reread in August 2017.
Reading the series together with the offical The Familiar reading club on Facebook, helped me gain so much more insights into this gargantuan story. And still, it's interesting that even though the plus on information is exciting, the reading experience totally works without it, too. The story just draws you in no matter if you've read it before or not.
December 30, 2015
I burned through this book and volume 1 (A Rainy Day in May) in less than a week after getting both of them. Good stuff - but then keep in mind I liked House of Leaves, so.
That said, I think The Familiar is a much easier read than House of Leaves - yes, there's some playing with text on the page, and some of that patented head-scratching Danielewski meta-horror. One of the characters, for example, is a meta-narrative construct of all knowable information about the 9 viewpoint characters, and it seems to be growing increasingly disturbed by the glitches showing up in the narrative. But on the whole, it's a pretty straightforward horror yarn at its core, and aside from the chapters in Singlish pretty easy to follow (but then again some of the conventions Danielewski makes heavy use of (like multiple (sometimes (to be sure) annoying) nested parentheses) are actually (disturbingly) similar to how I ((often) find myself) think(ing).
Of course, there's also the issue that this is volume 2 of a planned 27. I don't doubt that the story doesn't need to be told this way - I imagine Stephen King could probably get the whole 27 volumes into a single meaty 600-pager - but I don't think that means it shouldn't be. At the end of volume 2, I really feel like I know the characters quite deeply indeed, and the 9 plot threads are beginning to draw together in interesting ways. In the end, it isn't for everybody, but Danielewski is choosing to tell the story this way and I (for one (so far (at least))) am enjoying it.
That said, I think The Familiar is a much easier read than House of Leaves - yes, there's some playing with text on the page, and some of that patented head-scratching Danielewski meta-horror. One of the characters, for example, is a meta-narrative construct of all knowable information about the 9 viewpoint characters, and it seems to be growing increasingly disturbed by the glitches showing up in the narrative. But on the whole, it's a pretty straightforward horror yarn at its core, and aside from the chapters in Singlish pretty easy to follow (but then again some of the conventions Danielewski makes heavy use of (like multiple (sometimes (to be sure) annoying) nested parentheses) are actually (disturbingly) similar to how I ((often) find myself) think(ing).
Of course, there's also the issue that this is volume 2 of a planned 27. I don't doubt that the story doesn't need to be told this way - I imagine Stephen King could probably get the whole 27 volumes into a single meaty 600-pager - but I don't think that means it shouldn't be. At the end of volume 2, I really feel like I know the characters quite deeply indeed, and the 9 plot threads are beginning to draw together in interesting ways. In the end, it isn't for everybody, but Danielewski is choosing to tell the story this way and I (for one (so far (at least))) am enjoying it.
February 11, 2016
Video-review: https://youtu.be/n9Ml4enFork
The Familiar #2 is The Familiar #1 all over again, which is fine in some ways and disappointing in others. In the book's second half we start getting a glimpse of the connections between characters, and we are given reasons as to why exactly we invested €50 or whatever in this series already, with the prospect of endless more money to be invested. I liked the book, I really did, but the originality-factor has now definitely faded away, and Volume 3 will have to give me some serious shit plot-wise to keep me interested. Take notice, Mr. Danielewski!
The Familiar #2 is The Familiar #1 all over again, which is fine in some ways and disappointing in others. In the book's second half we start getting a glimpse of the connections between characters, and we are given reasons as to why exactly we invested €50 or whatever in this series already, with the prospect of endless more money to be invested. I liked the book, I really did, but the originality-factor has now definitely faded away, and Volume 3 will have to give me some serious shit plot-wise to keep me interested. Take notice, Mr. Danielewski!
November 15, 2015
There's more at stake in part 2 than part 1, for sure. I read the last half of 2 in a Xanther-fever. It's true.
I still get frustrated at times, particularly with a few of the threads that haven't started to tie up and with the fact that I can't help but get the sense that I'm reading cat fan fic (Cat fancy?), but I'll deal. The energy and creativity are undeniable and I'm very much looking forward to part 3.
I still get frustrated at times, particularly with a few of the threads that haven't started to tie up and with the fact that I can't help but get the sense that I'm reading cat fan fic (Cat fancy?), but I'll deal. The energy and creativity are undeniable and I'm very much looking forward to part 3.
Read
April 8, 2023More! More! I crave more of these books like Cas craves the Orb!
January 18, 2018
The kitten isn’t a kitten. It’s a young looking old Cat.
June 17, 2022
As the disproportionate nature of my review count and read count attests, I never got around to reviewing the first volume of this series and tbh that was in large part because I had no idea how to make heads or tails of it. I enjoyed what I read but much of it felt like set up, and it wasn’t til halfway through this one that I think this series is beginning to get super interesting. An adjustment of expectations must occur when one is reviewing a story that will not be finished, so “Into the Forest” and the rest of what we have of “The Familiar” must be taken for what it is. As it stands, these are shaping up to be unique magical realism with a structure that evokes Danielewski’s obsession with symmetry and narratives towered atop one another, using its flourishing multimedia format to result in a bewilderingly creative interplay between various genre mechanisms, including but not limited to sci-fantasy, slice-of-life, weird horror, mystery and noir fiction, and crime stories. The result for me, so far, has been in parts frustrating and compelling in equal measure, with the good [generally] outweighing my issues. And with this one, the connections between the seemingly disparate narratives are finally coalescing in ways that gradually unfurl rather than appear as grand revelations, and I can safely say at this point that I will probably be finishing the series before the end of the year.
The primary aspect that must be mentioned is that as usual Danielewski has a completely masterful control over the typographical and artistic detail in this novel. For all criticism that can be heaped on MZD’s writing I’ve always puzzled why “gimmicky” is the most common of them [even if the term “gimmick” wasn’t a thought-terminating criticism cliche in the first place], and his books are clearly meant to be understood not only as works of fiction but as works of physical shape and mass that occupies an elaborate sense of space in one hands; in his own way this is how MZD’s work makes the reader naturally engage deeper with the text. The artwork is consistently gorgeous and eclectic while also consistently holding to the overall aesthetic and emotional palette of the series, bursting and flourishing all over the page including textual art, where words themselves coalesce to form images that can be in equal amounts recognizable or alien. One sequence in particular, where a character is facing an inexplicable incident at a pet shop involving cages bursting open, shows this symbiotic relationship between written fiction and visual art brilliantly. This is the way Danielewski expresses his ideas and this is not the work of someone who is coasting on what made “House of Leaves” so alluring [a book which is still structured radically different from this despite also using typographic screwery] but rather an artist continuing to hone his personal literary voice and craft. Basically his style is no more or less “gimmicky” than anyone else’s, it only appears that way because such an expression of an artistic voice in a way as idiosyncratic and antithetical to conventional wisdom as this will necessarily get some people to look at it with suspicion. But there is never harm in meeting something on its level instead of one’s own preconceived expectations, and it’s with this sensibility that it’s best to approach MZD’s fiction. Books can not only be treated just as text as the means to an end for a narrative, but as blooming creative canvases for expression of everything that can fit between the limited space of a page.
MZD’s approach to the symbiosis between character and narrative structure is perhaps what I find both most interesting and most bewildering about the novel as well as its metatextual relationship to television, the medium this series is molded after [as “House of Leaves” concerns film and “Only Revolutions” more broadly concerns music and verse]. Like television “The Familiar” is split into “episodes” with various breaks and commercial transitions [often represented by the visual art], and like many prestige TV series it carries a complex wide-spanning range of perspectives and storylines, this one with narratives that at first seem disconnected yet slowly form lines between each other. And the characters in the novel seem very deliberately archetypal in the way much classic television series conveyed archetypes, making this book seem like an elaborate tribute to television across all its eras, from its “low brow” roots to its increasingly heightened recognition as high art over the first quarter of the century. But there are doubtless ways in which these archetypes are subverted but not necessarily [at least so far] deconstructed; the prime example being the Ibrahim family, who are almost portrayed as the traditional white picket fence family if not for a few things - the fact they’re a mixed race family with a neurodivergent daughter, as well as debt and other financial issues and work problems that make “The Familiar” burn with an undercurrent of post-millennial and Generation Z anxiety, which can be felt to some extent in all of the nine central narratives that are explored here.
Still, there’s clearly a grounding into archetypes here because of that aforementioned debt to television serials, and can just as well veer into something that initially seems outright stereotypical, and which I am not exactly sure at this point what Danielewsk is going for. As someone who is both neurodivergent and physically disabled I find Xanther to be an absolutely charming, adorable and compelling protagonist and I would probably take a bullet in the head for her if she was real, but I can see why other neurodiverse folk might view her “disabled savant” personality as problematic. But in Xanther’s case I think her portrayal works to balance out this notion, because she’s portrayed as a disabled person who is, despite her afflictions, mostly thoughtful, considerate and capable, and shows remarkable self-reliance for someone her age while also still feeling appropriately childish, all while never losing sight of the recognition that her physical and psychological ailments naturally limit her as with all disability. Her parents are flawed yet unequivocally positive role models and teachers and her life is defined by constantly seeking to ask questions and keep herself open minded. She is never patronized in the story or by the author, which is MUCH more than can be said for much of the condescending tripe that so often misleadingly attempts to portray our lives and minds ala Rain Man.
When it comes to some of the other perspectives, the intent is not as clear. Wide-ranging ethnic slang is a large part of the novel, and some of the accents in which Danielewski’s characters speak can seem born of a colonialist mentality; see Shnork, whose cadence is too close to Eastern European stereotype for comfort, or Jingjing, who through the fog of his narrative mixes various Asian slangs and languages in a way whose intent is as unclear as what’s actually going on in those chapters. Luther’s is probably the most well-executed, because his perspective probably feels the most authentic, but regardless all of it raises the question of whether or not a white man author should ever veer even tangentially to archetypes when writing about characters that lie outside of the white cishetero hegemony. I do think Danielewski portrays his characters, as always, with the depth and empathy he always has, but this doesn’t mean these portrayals are beyond criticism as their very nature could be understandably viewed as tenuous. I’m told MZD worked vigorously with linguistic scholars to perfect the language in this novel, as well as having various translators from the cultures detailed in this series, so I’ll choose to think the best of him and that he did his work properly and assume he is trying to understand and empathize with the full breadth of his ability, but regardless it’s not my place to make that decision; I would love to specifically hear what POC readers think of all this.
As mentioned a bit before I really enjoy how this series so far has been playing with genre fiction and weaving disparate pulp mechanics together to create something with a unique, playful dynamic. We've got crime thrillers working with slice-of-life realism that can turn into magical realism within sentences, colliding with dense mysteries and drugged up surrealist narratives and even hints at westerns, etc. As of right now, I'm not sure what the nexus of all of it will end up being, but on its own it's engaging, off-kilter, and interesting.
Some stray thoughts on the different perspective chapters I couldn’t fit into a paragraph but are compelling me to talk about them anyway:
-The Jingjing chapters seem to be throw-book-at-wall levels for a lot of people, but after finishing “Into the Forest” I can honestly say they’re some of my favorite bits of the series so far. And they ARE completely impenetrable at first glance, and they did leave me grasping desperately for some thread of coherency at first, but it wasn’t until long even into the first book that I really started to fall into a hypnotic rhythm they have that none of the other perspectives do. He narrates in a mix of English, Malay and Chinese that coheres into a Joycean dream-babble that becomes kind of intoxicating once you completely liberate yourself from trying to parse it word by word. I actually found Anwar’s chapters more difficult because of the amount of ever-deepening internal monologue and its collusion with computer jargon that flew over my head, or Cas’ as well for just feeling like being placed into the middle of a storyline where you seem to be missing some vital piece of information that the characters aren’t yet they won’t directly discuss it; and by contrast Jingjing’s is much easier to attune to since the language and the feel of the words on the page is much more enjoyable to latch on to, especially when the writing reaches a percussive sing-songy cadence. Jingjing’s sections unfold appropriately like the hypnagogic state of mind of its drug-addicted narrator and his dreamy adventures in the urban heat and delirium of nocturnal Singapore, and it makes his chapters, for me, delightfully fun to read. There’s lots of neat moments, but I especially loved the scene in this one where he’s withdrawing on his hammock and has a vision [?] of the cat materializing to him.
-There’s something quietly haunting about the Isandorno passages, which are written in a somber, realistic sense and don’t have the same supernatural edge as the rest - but despite this they burn perhaps the strongest with a sense of mystical, almost dread-inducing intrigue. And they contain some of the best passages of prose in the novel, foregoing some of the convolution for phrasing that's beautiful in more of a stark way.
-Luther's chapters in the first book were some of the most frustrating for me precisely for just how dense the slang is [and I guess all of this is on me for being a peabrained monolingual American], as well as having the highest abundance of phrases that eschew English entirely. But in the second book his narrative has gotten a lot more interesting, because the lyrical flow of his passages clicked and reveal Luther as possibly the most brutal and uncompromising of all the protagonists, and it's in this one we finally get to see just how bad of a dude he really is, making me increasingly nervous for what seems like his inevitable collision with Xanther's story [as is seemingly being set up].
-Of all the narratives, Cas and Ozgur's respectively feel the most Pynchonesque, both of them sort of focusing on the idea of being towered over by invisible forces of governance and power that neither understand. It's especially effective with Cas, whose narrative seems due for reaching a head in relation to Xanther's and everything going on in LA, yet even the reader is left in the dark as to how this is playing out, overall making me feel as lost as her as she holds something of immeasurable and practically eldritch power in her hands [quite literally]. And the twist at the end of Cas' narrative in this entry [and thus the book] definitely perfectly primes what's left of the "season" [as it is] to tie up in an interesting, complex fashion.
And finally, this series so far has been great at evoking the overall sociopolitical climate of the early 2010s [at least in the United States], where the liberal promises of hope and optimism from the Obama administration were dwindling yet still not fully subsumed by the darkness and pessimism from around 2016 and beyond, and that sense of boiling anxiety for the dark political horizons to come feels palpable, and this is reflected on how both books so far have built on the foreboding tone of the last - reading the third will likely be the card that determines for me if this is the direction this series is going. Or rather has gone, since the fifth novel is sadly the end of this captivating weird magic Danielewski is capturing here, at least for the foreseeable future. But nevertheless, the investment, while sometimes frustrating, has been worthwhile so far and I'm excited to see where this concludes as it is. Stan Kle, btw.
"Where identity's at stake, the unconscious keeps attempting to create a blind until it succeeds in fortifying one beyond the abilities of the intellect to parse. We cannot mentally accommodate the vastness of the variables we daily inhabit. So we invent a self we believe we can."
The primary aspect that must be mentioned is that as usual Danielewski has a completely masterful control over the typographical and artistic detail in this novel. For all criticism that can be heaped on MZD’s writing I’ve always puzzled why “gimmicky” is the most common of them [even if the term “gimmick” wasn’t a thought-terminating criticism cliche in the first place], and his books are clearly meant to be understood not only as works of fiction but as works of physical shape and mass that occupies an elaborate sense of space in one hands; in his own way this is how MZD’s work makes the reader naturally engage deeper with the text. The artwork is consistently gorgeous and eclectic while also consistently holding to the overall aesthetic and emotional palette of the series, bursting and flourishing all over the page including textual art, where words themselves coalesce to form images that can be in equal amounts recognizable or alien. One sequence in particular, where a character is facing an inexplicable incident at a pet shop involving cages bursting open, shows this symbiotic relationship between written fiction and visual art brilliantly. This is the way Danielewski expresses his ideas and this is not the work of someone who is coasting on what made “House of Leaves” so alluring [a book which is still structured radically different from this despite also using typographic screwery] but rather an artist continuing to hone his personal literary voice and craft. Basically his style is no more or less “gimmicky” than anyone else’s, it only appears that way because such an expression of an artistic voice in a way as idiosyncratic and antithetical to conventional wisdom as this will necessarily get some people to look at it with suspicion. But there is never harm in meeting something on its level instead of one’s own preconceived expectations, and it’s with this sensibility that it’s best to approach MZD’s fiction. Books can not only be treated just as text as the means to an end for a narrative, but as blooming creative canvases for expression of everything that can fit between the limited space of a page.
MZD’s approach to the symbiosis between character and narrative structure is perhaps what I find both most interesting and most bewildering about the novel as well as its metatextual relationship to television, the medium this series is molded after [as “House of Leaves” concerns film and “Only Revolutions” more broadly concerns music and verse]. Like television “The Familiar” is split into “episodes” with various breaks and commercial transitions [often represented by the visual art], and like many prestige TV series it carries a complex wide-spanning range of perspectives and storylines, this one with narratives that at first seem disconnected yet slowly form lines between each other. And the characters in the novel seem very deliberately archetypal in the way much classic television series conveyed archetypes, making this book seem like an elaborate tribute to television across all its eras, from its “low brow” roots to its increasingly heightened recognition as high art over the first quarter of the century. But there are doubtless ways in which these archetypes are subverted but not necessarily [at least so far] deconstructed; the prime example being the Ibrahim family, who are almost portrayed as the traditional white picket fence family if not for a few things - the fact they’re a mixed race family with a neurodivergent daughter, as well as debt and other financial issues and work problems that make “The Familiar” burn with an undercurrent of post-millennial and Generation Z anxiety, which can be felt to some extent in all of the nine central narratives that are explored here.
Still, there’s clearly a grounding into archetypes here because of that aforementioned debt to television serials, and can just as well veer into something that initially seems outright stereotypical, and which I am not exactly sure at this point what Danielewsk is going for. As someone who is both neurodivergent and physically disabled I find Xanther to be an absolutely charming, adorable and compelling protagonist and I would probably take a bullet in the head for her if she was real, but I can see why other neurodiverse folk might view her “disabled savant” personality as problematic. But in Xanther’s case I think her portrayal works to balance out this notion, because she’s portrayed as a disabled person who is, despite her afflictions, mostly thoughtful, considerate and capable, and shows remarkable self-reliance for someone her age while also still feeling appropriately childish, all while never losing sight of the recognition that her physical and psychological ailments naturally limit her as with all disability. Her parents are flawed yet unequivocally positive role models and teachers and her life is defined by constantly seeking to ask questions and keep herself open minded. She is never patronized in the story or by the author, which is MUCH more than can be said for much of the condescending tripe that so often misleadingly attempts to portray our lives and minds ala Rain Man.
When it comes to some of the other perspectives, the intent is not as clear. Wide-ranging ethnic slang is a large part of the novel, and some of the accents in which Danielewski’s characters speak can seem born of a colonialist mentality; see Shnork, whose cadence is too close to Eastern European stereotype for comfort, or Jingjing, who through the fog of his narrative mixes various Asian slangs and languages in a way whose intent is as unclear as what’s actually going on in those chapters. Luther’s is probably the most well-executed, because his perspective probably feels the most authentic, but regardless all of it raises the question of whether or not a white man author should ever veer even tangentially to archetypes when writing about characters that lie outside of the white cishetero hegemony. I do think Danielewski portrays his characters, as always, with the depth and empathy he always has, but this doesn’t mean these portrayals are beyond criticism as their very nature could be understandably viewed as tenuous. I’m told MZD worked vigorously with linguistic scholars to perfect the language in this novel, as well as having various translators from the cultures detailed in this series, so I’ll choose to think the best of him and that he did his work properly and assume he is trying to understand and empathize with the full breadth of his ability, but regardless it’s not my place to make that decision; I would love to specifically hear what POC readers think of all this.
As mentioned a bit before I really enjoy how this series so far has been playing with genre fiction and weaving disparate pulp mechanics together to create something with a unique, playful dynamic. We've got crime thrillers working with slice-of-life realism that can turn into magical realism within sentences, colliding with dense mysteries and drugged up surrealist narratives and even hints at westerns, etc. As of right now, I'm not sure what the nexus of all of it will end up being, but on its own it's engaging, off-kilter, and interesting.
Some stray thoughts on the different perspective chapters I couldn’t fit into a paragraph but are compelling me to talk about them anyway:
-The Jingjing chapters seem to be throw-book-at-wall levels for a lot of people, but after finishing “Into the Forest” I can honestly say they’re some of my favorite bits of the series so far. And they ARE completely impenetrable at first glance, and they did leave me grasping desperately for some thread of coherency at first, but it wasn’t until long even into the first book that I really started to fall into a hypnotic rhythm they have that none of the other perspectives do. He narrates in a mix of English, Malay and Chinese that coheres into a Joycean dream-babble that becomes kind of intoxicating once you completely liberate yourself from trying to parse it word by word. I actually found Anwar’s chapters more difficult because of the amount of ever-deepening internal monologue and its collusion with computer jargon that flew over my head, or Cas’ as well for just feeling like being placed into the middle of a storyline where you seem to be missing some vital piece of information that the characters aren’t yet they won’t directly discuss it; and by contrast Jingjing’s is much easier to attune to since the language and the feel of the words on the page is much more enjoyable to latch on to, especially when the writing reaches a percussive sing-songy cadence. Jingjing’s sections unfold appropriately like the hypnagogic state of mind of its drug-addicted narrator and his dreamy adventures in the urban heat and delirium of nocturnal Singapore, and it makes his chapters, for me, delightfully fun to read. There’s lots of neat moments, but I especially loved the scene in this one where he’s withdrawing on his hammock and has a vision [?] of the cat materializing to him.
-There’s something quietly haunting about the Isandorno passages, which are written in a somber, realistic sense and don’t have the same supernatural edge as the rest - but despite this they burn perhaps the strongest with a sense of mystical, almost dread-inducing intrigue. And they contain some of the best passages of prose in the novel, foregoing some of the convolution for phrasing that's beautiful in more of a stark way.
-Luther's chapters in the first book were some of the most frustrating for me precisely for just how dense the slang is [and I guess all of this is on me for being a peabrained monolingual American], as well as having the highest abundance of phrases that eschew English entirely. But in the second book his narrative has gotten a lot more interesting, because the lyrical flow of his passages clicked and reveal Luther as possibly the most brutal and uncompromising of all the protagonists, and it's in this one we finally get to see just how bad of a dude he really is, making me increasingly nervous for what seems like his inevitable collision with Xanther's story [as is seemingly being set up].
-Of all the narratives, Cas and Ozgur's respectively feel the most Pynchonesque, both of them sort of focusing on the idea of being towered over by invisible forces of governance and power that neither understand. It's especially effective with Cas, whose narrative seems due for reaching a head in relation to Xanther's and everything going on in LA, yet even the reader is left in the dark as to how this is playing out, overall making me feel as lost as her as she holds something of immeasurable and practically eldritch power in her hands [quite literally]. And the twist at the end of Cas' narrative in this entry [and thus the book] definitely perfectly primes what's left of the "season" [as it is] to tie up in an interesting, complex fashion.
And finally, this series so far has been great at evoking the overall sociopolitical climate of the early 2010s [at least in the United States], where the liberal promises of hope and optimism from the Obama administration were dwindling yet still not fully subsumed by the darkness and pessimism from around 2016 and beyond, and that sense of boiling anxiety for the dark political horizons to come feels palpable, and this is reflected on how both books so far have built on the foreboding tone of the last - reading the third will likely be the card that determines for me if this is the direction this series is going. Or rather has gone, since the fifth novel is sadly the end of this captivating weird magic Danielewski is capturing here, at least for the foreseeable future. But nevertheless, the investment, while sometimes frustrating, has been worthwhile so far and I'm excited to see where this concludes as it is. Stan Kle, btw.
"Where identity's at stake, the unconscious keeps attempting to create a blind until it succeeds in fortifying one beyond the abilities of the intellect to parse. We cannot mentally accommodate the vastness of the variables we daily inhabit. So we invent a self we believe we can."
April 11, 2018
Well, another volume down. This one took a bit to get into, and of course the cliff hanger ending was a nice hook, but it did get better. I really hope MZD is able to keep this going. I am looking forward to the rest of season 1.
August 18, 2019
Mark Z. Danielewski is my favorite author. I have read most of his stories as I'm still making my way through this series. However, this book really made me question if I wanted to.
The Familiar Volume 2 is a 300 page story excruciatingly told over 880 pages. There is so much in this book that simply does not need to be there. There is seemingly endless filler, nonsense, and wasted space suffocating what is actually a really good story crying to be heard.
Danielewski never writes his stories "normally" and that is why so many people, myself included, love reading his works. The Familiar Volume 2 seemingly continue the narrative of the first volume, but where as Volume 1 was centralized around a single event on a single day (which in turn allowed the story to remain focused), Volume 2 is not contained to single day, or a single event. In fact the book covers well over a month of time. That only helps this book feel incredibly unfocused and lost. It almost feels like Danielewski wasn't entirely sure what exactly he wanted to write in this volume.
To me, that is shown in Xanther. Or really, the lack of Xanther. Just like in Volume 1, Volume 2 still follows the NINE different narratives. Despite that, Xanther is CLEARLY the main character of this entire story. After all, she is the one who got the cat. You know, the thing this entire series is named after. We barely follow that story though. When we do, it's the same thing over and over.
Instead, we keep getting hit with speed bumps and road blocks and detours, to the point it becomes almost demoralizing to flip the page and see you have to keep reading about how Lutero is having sex with yet another hooker in some hotel somewhere, and how could that possibly tie into the greater story?
This is supposedly a 27 volume story. That's almost 4 times as many books as the entire Harry Potter series. Why is it so important to spend so much time talking about Lutero's constant sexual urges? There is no way that will matter by the end.
Obviously the series as been put on hold, and we may never see the full story. After dragging myself through this volume, I'm not surprised. There is simply no way a lot of what was in this book can matter through it all. Not ever last thing needs to matter, but there is a limit. This volume really, really pushed it.
To summarize before I go into some spoilers, where Volume 1 was really good and an enjoyable read, Volume 2 was not. It's unfocused. It's boring. It has so much filler. Underneath it all is a story desperate to come out. If you're willing to sift through it all, there is an interesting story to find, but it is a struggle.
Ok. SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT FORTH
The Familiar Volume 2 is a 300 page story excruciatingly told over 880 pages. There is so much in this book that simply does not need to be there. There is seemingly endless filler, nonsense, and wasted space suffocating what is actually a really good story crying to be heard.
Danielewski never writes his stories "normally" and that is why so many people, myself included, love reading his works. The Familiar Volume 2 seemingly continue the narrative of the first volume, but where as Volume 1 was centralized around a single event on a single day (which in turn allowed the story to remain focused), Volume 2 is not contained to single day, or a single event. In fact the book covers well over a month of time. That only helps this book feel incredibly unfocused and lost. It almost feels like Danielewski wasn't entirely sure what exactly he wanted to write in this volume.
To me, that is shown in Xanther. Or really, the lack of Xanther. Just like in Volume 1, Volume 2 still follows the NINE different narratives. Despite that, Xanther is CLEARLY the main character of this entire story. After all, she is the one who got the cat. You know, the thing this entire series is named after. We barely follow that story though. When we do, it's the same thing over and over.
Instead, we keep getting hit with speed bumps and road blocks and detours, to the point it becomes almost demoralizing to flip the page and see you have to keep reading about how Lutero is having sex with yet another hooker in some hotel somewhere, and how could that possibly tie into the greater story?
This is supposedly a 27 volume story. That's almost 4 times as many books as the entire Harry Potter series. Why is it so important to spend so much time talking about Lutero's constant sexual urges? There is no way that will matter by the end.
Obviously the series as been put on hold, and we may never see the full story. After dragging myself through this volume, I'm not surprised. There is simply no way a lot of what was in this book can matter through it all. Not ever last thing needs to matter, but there is a limit. This volume really, really pushed it.
To summarize before I go into some spoilers, where Volume 1 was really good and an enjoyable read, Volume 2 was not. It's unfocused. It's boring. It has so much filler. Underneath it all is a story desperate to come out. If you're willing to sift through it all, there is an interesting story to find, but it is a struggle.
Ok. SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT FORTH
December 30, 2020
I might be applying a higher bar for “Into the Forest” than I’ve ever done for any other books, and it’s only taking that into account that it warrants 4 instead of a full 5 stars. By any normal standard, this is still an absolutely magnificent piece of art: a novel that aims to re-invent the mechanics of books, filled with nine parallel narratives that are as thrilling as they are intricate, each with their own unique typeset, voice, genre, tempo, and even language … Some pages contain paintings made of words, others are suddenly interrupted by a chapter-long comic strip or the rendition of forest sounds. You won’t understand a great deal of what’s going on, but the book takes that non-understanding into account, never lets you get lost completely, uses that confusion as a narrative device to make you feel disoriented when the characters do, and suddenly be on top of things when they get home, are safe, feel like they have life under control. It’s so so so so beautiful, and I’m constantly in awe that a book like this ever managed to get produced – each of the almost 900 pages oozes the effort that went into by the author, two dozen artists working alongside of him, the publisher, even the bookbinder and whoever’s responsible for that high quality paper that does not bear a single smudge or crease even though I have been carrying “Into the Forest” around in my backpack for the better part of two months now.
But in all that magnificence, this second installment of “The Familiar” is just not quite absolutely perfect, and I guess for a novel that attempts to revolutionize the format of the book itself, it is worth holding it accountable even for those nitpicky details where it could still learn a thing from more conventional books:
As I said, Danielewski juggles nine distinct narratives with dozens of voices – some are written in Singapore pidgin, others in the slang of 10-year-old school children or LA gang members, and it’s only natural that something slips every once in a while. Nevertheless, sadly, these slippages become momentarily jarring just because they contrast so harshly with the incredible ambition all around. Sometimes, the de-facto protagonist Xanther, an epileptic girl in her early teens who allegedly struggles quite a bit at school, talks with an eloquence that’s either far beyond her years or that of a formidable child prodigy. Similarly, there is an interlude of therapy sessions where a woman describes a pornographic encounter – fair enough – but does so using stylistic devices that makes her sound like a modernist Auteur, not like someone recounting an unsettling experience that happened to themselves.
A similar thing holds true for Danielewski’s ventures into poetry. There isn’t much, only a handful of original verses throughout this novel, and they’re quite good, sure, but they break mimesis insofar as they’re just not good enough for a character to ostensibly write her PhD thesis on and be deeply touched by those lines. This would not be a problem in almost any other novel – there are brilliant novelists dabbling as decent poets aplenty – but they stand here as reminders that “Into the Forest” doesn’t quite fulfill its enormous ambition. It’s a bit as if Joyce in “Ulysses” suddenly got the names of two of Dublin’s major streets mixed up, or Tolkien made a grammatical error translating his own Quenya.
Add to that the potential criticism that one or two of Danielewski’s narratives bit not only be more forgettable than the rest, but that Danielewski himself seems to feel so, almost completely neglecting them for the second half of the novel, and then add to that that his dazzling games with form, tone and media just feels slightly more *familiar* in the second book of the series and thus does not dazzle quite as much anymore as it did in “One Rainy Day in May”. You’ll be left with what’s still an undeniable masterpiece, but one in which the master is just as undeniably human. That’s no problem at all, of course, only a tiny little bit disenchanting …
I still cannot wait to get to the next part of this series!
But in all that magnificence, this second installment of “The Familiar” is just not quite absolutely perfect, and I guess for a novel that attempts to revolutionize the format of the book itself, it is worth holding it accountable even for those nitpicky details where it could still learn a thing from more conventional books:
As I said, Danielewski juggles nine distinct narratives with dozens of voices – some are written in Singapore pidgin, others in the slang of 10-year-old school children or LA gang members, and it’s only natural that something slips every once in a while. Nevertheless, sadly, these slippages become momentarily jarring just because they contrast so harshly with the incredible ambition all around. Sometimes, the de-facto protagonist Xanther, an epileptic girl in her early teens who allegedly struggles quite a bit at school, talks with an eloquence that’s either far beyond her years or that of a formidable child prodigy. Similarly, there is an interlude of therapy sessions where a woman describes a pornographic encounter – fair enough – but does so using stylistic devices that makes her sound like a modernist Auteur, not like someone recounting an unsettling experience that happened to themselves.
A similar thing holds true for Danielewski’s ventures into poetry. There isn’t much, only a handful of original verses throughout this novel, and they’re quite good, sure, but they break mimesis insofar as they’re just not good enough for a character to ostensibly write her PhD thesis on and be deeply touched by those lines. This would not be a problem in almost any other novel – there are brilliant novelists dabbling as decent poets aplenty – but they stand here as reminders that “Into the Forest” doesn’t quite fulfill its enormous ambition. It’s a bit as if Joyce in “Ulysses” suddenly got the names of two of Dublin’s major streets mixed up, or Tolkien made a grammatical error translating his own Quenya.
Add to that the potential criticism that one or two of Danielewski’s narratives bit not only be more forgettable than the rest, but that Danielewski himself seems to feel so, almost completely neglecting them for the second half of the novel, and then add to that that his dazzling games with form, tone and media just feels slightly more *familiar* in the second book of the series and thus does not dazzle quite as much anymore as it did in “One Rainy Day in May”. You’ll be left with what’s still an undeniable masterpiece, but one in which the master is just as undeniably human. That’s no problem at all, of course, only a tiny little bit disenchanting …
I still cannot wait to get to the next part of this series!
May 1, 2016
It's a random Tuesday. You and your friends are hanging out, deciding how to spend the night. You're in love with this amazing TV show, like really in love, convinced there's something magic and unique about it. You haven't watched the first season in awhile, but you say to your friends hey guys, I know what we should do; have you ever seen _____?. They answer no; you queue up the pilot.
And proceed to spend the next forty-four minutes biting your nails because oh my god, guys, okay, I know it's awkward right now but I PROMISE it gets better --- the development is everything --- look I promise it's good!
I suspect this is what's going to happen with The Familiar.
In my review of Vol. 1, I made it clear that despite my Danielewski soft spot, I wasn't quite on board with this book-a-vision series. The first volume is disjointed, mildly racist, excessively concerned with design over content. But I was willing to give it a chance, because I knew, thanks to decades of dedicated TV watching, that pilots can be forgivable in the long run.
And it's looking like this might be one of those times.
Here's the thing about TV: sure, we watch for plot & visuals. But more often than not, what really draws us in are the characters. Think favourite TV show, and most could list a favourite character or two. Now, favourite book -- harder!, for me, anyway. I have no favourite character in Lolita; reading's not about that, for me -- but TV is. I need characters to latch to; people I'm excited to see turn up. But this favouring only happens with time -- with getting to know the characters, noting their distinctions and connections. And now that I've finished Into the Forest, that's starting for me -- and that means Vol. 1 may already be forgivable.
This wasn't great literature (though there were moments of impeccable design!), but the worldbuilding is getting interesting (and anyone else thinking Danielewski may pull a David Mitchell and draw in House of Leaves and Only Revolutions? All that blue and "allways" gotta mean something..) -- and more importantly, I'm getting to know the characters. I love Astair and Cas; look forward to Xanther's pink and Ozgur's grey; groan when I see Jingjing's blue (and I still find the pidgin English offensive, though I vaguely see why it's necessary). I want the stories to unfold, and I want Volume 3, and alright! I'm invested! That's what you wanted, isn't it, Mark Z.? You win, asshole. I'm all in for this one.
However: some of it is legitimately boring. There's a still a sense of suspense missing from this, one that was artfully crafted in another TV-style book (J. J. Abrams' S. -- TV style if only because reading it felt like watching Fringe or Lost). This isn't perfect, but I do give a shit, now. And while I'm not recommending it to friends on a Tuesday night just yet...if Danielewski can follow through, I really think it might get there.
soundtrack: Gazelle Twin's 'Out of Body' album
And proceed to spend the next forty-four minutes biting your nails because oh my god, guys, okay, I know it's awkward right now but I PROMISE it gets better --- the development is everything --- look I promise it's good!
I suspect this is what's going to happen with The Familiar.
In my review of Vol. 1, I made it clear that despite my Danielewski soft spot, I wasn't quite on board with this book-a-vision series. The first volume is disjointed, mildly racist, excessively concerned with design over content. But I was willing to give it a chance, because I knew, thanks to decades of dedicated TV watching, that pilots can be forgivable in the long run.
And it's looking like this might be one of those times.
Here's the thing about TV: sure, we watch for plot & visuals. But more often than not, what really draws us in are the characters. Think favourite TV show, and most could list a favourite character or two. Now, favourite book -- harder!, for me, anyway. I have no favourite character in Lolita; reading's not about that, for me -- but TV is. I need characters to latch to; people I'm excited to see turn up. But this favouring only happens with time -- with getting to know the characters, noting their distinctions and connections. And now that I've finished Into the Forest, that's starting for me -- and that means Vol. 1 may already be forgivable.
This wasn't great literature (though there were moments of impeccable design!), but the worldbuilding is getting interesting (and anyone else thinking Danielewski may pull a David Mitchell and draw in House of Leaves and Only Revolutions? All that blue and "allways" gotta mean something..) -- and more importantly, I'm getting to know the characters. I love Astair and Cas; look forward to Xanther's pink and Ozgur's grey; groan when I see Jingjing's blue (and I still find the pidgin English offensive, though I vaguely see why it's necessary). I want the stories to unfold, and I want Volume 3, and alright! I'm invested! That's what you wanted, isn't it, Mark Z.? You win, asshole. I'm all in for this one.
However: some of it is legitimately boring. There's a still a sense of suspense missing from this, one that was artfully crafted in another TV-style book (J. J. Abrams' S. -- TV style if only because reading it felt like watching Fringe or Lost). This isn't perfect, but I do give a shit, now. And while I'm not recommending it to friends on a Tuesday night just yet...if Danielewski can follow through, I really think it might get there.
soundtrack: Gazelle Twin's 'Out of Body' album
January 21, 2018
I'm not sure why I read the second book. I didn't really care about any of the narratives by the end of the first one, but I think I trusted that there must be payoff in project as big as Danieliewski is attempting.
The style is so thick that wading through it overwhelms the narrative, and it's just not worth it for a story about a girl finding a cat in the street. Sure, there are more sinister things going on: some sort of Mexican gang stuff; a group of obscure computer programmer sorcerers or something. I started skipping whole chapters because I just didn't care enough to slog through the poor open-field poetry and lazy dialogue. I think I gave it a good try but after two 800+ page books about nothing, I'm done.
The style is so thick that wading through it overwhelms the narrative, and it's just not worth it for a story about a girl finding a cat in the street. Sure, there are more sinister things going on: some sort of Mexican gang stuff; a group of obscure computer programmer sorcerers or something. I started skipping whole chapters because I just didn't care enough to slog through the poor open-field poetry and lazy dialogue. I think I gave it a good try but after two 800+ page books about nothing, I'm done.
March 6, 2018
This book is like a universe of it's own. If you love feeling like there is more than what the eye can see, and love getting lost in an amazing labyrinth of intriguing mindfucks, this is just the book for you...
it changed my life in so many small ways. It made me feel like a teenager obsessing over a favorite band again. It made me do more art, it made me wear pink sneakers (because I love Xanther so much) and it made me dye some Shirts, and braid my hair, because I keep hoping to bump into a fellow super fan on the street one day.
it changed my life in so many small ways. It made me feel like a teenager obsessing over a favorite band again. It made me do more art, it made me wear pink sneakers (because I love Xanther so much) and it made me dye some Shirts, and braid my hair, because I keep hoping to bump into a fellow super fan on the street one day.
May 26, 2016
A strange blend of novel, poem, graphic design, descriptivist linguistics, geo-caching, and Cicada 3301-type mystery meets cryptography. As such - its a Danielewski novel.
Can't wait for Honeysuckle and PAIN!
Can't wait for Honeysuckle and PAIN!
February 4, 2017
It's premature to really even think about reviewing a novel when you are just a bit more than 7.4% through its promised run, but here goes anyway. In terms of the overarching storyline, Into the Forest starts weaving together the threads that were laid out in One Rainy Day in May, sometimes obviously, as with the final sentence of the book proper, and sometimes, perhaps, with the vaguest hints. And there's one thread, Shnorhk's, that still seems only connected by geography. I find that I'm even more invested in the individual characters' stories than I was at the end of the first book, so MZD is doing something right. (And fortunately I was able to move straight on to book 3.)
As a standalone book, the second is a little less successful than the first. Of course, this is unavoidable to some measure in a novel released in installments, but there should be some aesthetic closure to each part. This will always be most easily accomplished in the first book of the series, simply because it has a clear beginning, and some sort of a complete story can be told. This second book actually ends well, in this sense, for most of the characters, but only a few of those stories are really self-contained. I suppose, it may be too much to ask that of any of them.
In this book, too, MZD begins to push the limits of the form in a more substantial way than playing with the typography. Anwar, in one of his chapters, debugs a piece of code by having musical notes play whenever an error occurs; different notes are assigned to different lines of code. At one point, the sequence, represented in the text only as notes on a staff, plays out a familiar movie theme. Anwar recognizes this, and mentions it in a later chapter, but the name of the movie is never explicitly given to the reader, so if you can't read music, you're out of luck. This may be merely an Easter egg for the musically inclined (who are old enough to recognize the movie, at least), but I don't think so. There's another chapter (Isandorno's) that begins entirely in untranslated Spanish. This is interrupted by a conversation between the Narcons (the meta characters in the book) that suggests that while this may just be a "glitch" at this point- the text is rendered once again in English- it may also be a sign that MZD is planning to leave the linguistic barriers up as this series progresses. I think that could be done to great effect, but it will have to be done carefully if he doesn't want to lose his readers.
At the moment, it's still too early to say whether this is going to be any good. But I'm enjoying the ride so far.
As a standalone book, the second is a little less successful than the first. Of course, this is unavoidable to some measure in a novel released in installments, but there should be some aesthetic closure to each part. This will always be most easily accomplished in the first book of the series, simply because it has a clear beginning, and some sort of a complete story can be told. This second book actually ends well, in this sense, for most of the characters, but only a few of those stories are really self-contained. I suppose, it may be too much to ask that of any of them.
In this book, too, MZD begins to push the limits of the form in a more substantial way than playing with the typography. Anwar, in one of his chapters, debugs a piece of code by having musical notes play whenever an error occurs; different notes are assigned to different lines of code. At one point, the sequence, represented in the text only as notes on a staff, plays out a familiar movie theme. Anwar recognizes this, and mentions it in a later chapter, but the name of the movie is never explicitly given to the reader, so if you can't read music, you're out of luck. This may be merely an Easter egg for the musically inclined (who are old enough to recognize the movie, at least), but I don't think so. There's another chapter (Isandorno's) that begins entirely in untranslated Spanish. This is interrupted by a conversation between the Narcons (the meta characters in the book) that suggests that while this may just be a "glitch" at this point- the text is rendered once again in English- it may also be a sign that MZD is planning to leave the linguistic barriers up as this series progresses. I think that could be done to great effect, but it will have to be done carefully if he doesn't want to lose his readers.
At the moment, it's still too early to say whether this is going to be any good. But I'm enjoying the ride so far.
dnf
December 26, 2018It was a tough decision as it's not that I dislike the book, but I am not invested enough in the characters to continue with a story I know will never resolve itself. So after 317 pages I decided to not invest the time and energy it takes to fully appreciate the book.
The series has been paused/discontinued by the publisher after volume 5 in February 2018.
The series has been paused/discontinued by the publisher after volume 5 in February 2018.
May 11, 2021
Remember finishing the first book in this series and thinking I was really invested in the storylines. Maybe it’s the time I waited until finishing the second book or maybe this sophomore effort just wasn’t as good, but I found myself just pushing to finish the book and finding myself no longer invested or interested in all but one or two storylines. I’ll probably continue the series but I’m certainly in no hurry to do so.
February 18, 2018
Danielewski continues to amaze with volume 2. As the reader progresses you really fall into a groove of the books. I was amazed to see the 880 pages of this book fly by. I couldn't stop until I was done and I was caving more.
#BeAHymnForGood
#BeAHymnForGood
August 17, 2021
Just as fantastic and engrossing as the first volume; the nine narratives seem to end in more of a cliffhanger this time around and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
September 19, 2021
So fun to read, beyond reading really.
August 19, 2017
4.5 !!
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