Houses of Ravicka

Ravicka #4

by Renee Gladman

Ravicka’s comptroller, author of Regulating the Book of Regulations, seems to have lost a house. It is not where it’s supposed to be, though an invisible house on the far side of town, which corresponds to the missing house, remains appropriately invisible. Inside the invisible house, a nameless Ravickian considers how she came to the life she is living, and investigates the deep history of Ravicka—that mysterious city-country born of Renee Gladman’s philosophical, funny, audacious, extraordinary imagination.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Philosophy, Literature, Architecture, The United States Of America, United States

152 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2017

About the author

Renee Gladman is an artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of writing, drawing and architecture. She is the author of numerous published works, including a cycle of novels about the city-state Ravicka and its inhabitants, the Ravickians—Event Factory (2010), The Ravickians (2011), Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge (2013), and Houses of Ravicka (2017)—all published by Dorothy. Her most recent books are My Lesbian Novel (2024) and a reprint of her 2008 book TOAF (both also from Dorothy). Recent essays and visual work have appeared in The Architectural Review, POETRY, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and e-flux, in addition to several artist monographs and exhibition catalogs. Gladman’s first solo exhibition of drawings, The Dreams of Sentences, opened in fall 2022 at Wesleyan University, followed by Narratives of Magnitude at Artists Space in New York City in spring 2023. She has been awarded fellowships and artist residencies from the Menil Drawing Institute, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, among others, and received a Windham-Campbell prize in fiction in 2021. She makes her home in New England.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Houses and streets are the architecture of the City, language is the architecture of thought. Renee Gladman's Ravicka is a place where all these may stand in for each other. Uncertain architectures that shift and lose themselves are explored through created language providing concepts needed to live among them, and all point together into something beyond them, towards a philosophy of space and concept.

If this is initially the most concrete of the Ravicka novels, with an actual mystery to draw us into its alleys and atria, it also dissolves most dramatically into its own metaphysics. Of the four of the sequence so far, it's my favorite since the first.

[PaperBird]

Some quick thoughts here: https://youtu.be/7Pz1AGHCAVI

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some mind wanted to grow a city on top of this one, even though there was another, an ancient one, growing beneath us.

Book Four of the Ravicka cycle begins in Part One with a new voice: that of Comptroller Duder Jakobi, who is on a mission to investigate the case of a missing house and its parallel counterpart. Employing Gladman's invented science of geoscography to measure the movements of Ravicka's shifting architecture, Jakobi traverses the city in an arcane manner, providing readers with the street-level details many of us have probably craved since the beginning of the series. Jakobi is from the first generation of Ravickians to grow up in the wake of the despair, bringing a new, more pragmatic perspective to Ravicka's crisis, and more specifically to the phenomenon of its moving buildings. Jakobi is an engaging and humorous narrator and in this person of fluid gender Gladman coalesces much of her strengths as a writer. This first section of the book written from Jakobi's POV is one of my favorites in the entire series.

Part Two shifts to narration by the two inhabitants of the two houses Jakobi is tracking. Here the text moves once again, somewhat abruptly, into more abstract territory. Whereas Part One was characterized by a measurable, scientific, and most notably external approach to examining the movement of buildings, Part Two attempts to describe the phenomenon in more artistic terms, from within the structures themselves. In the Afterword, Gladman explains the reasons for this shift and, more broadly, the book's overall structure. While this explanation is interesting from the standpoint of craft, I would have preferred not to read this immediately following the end of the novel. However, I think if I'd waited a day or so for the text to sink further in, it would have been a more appropriate time to read these notes on process.

And in that time, events break in your living—people get frightened, start fleeing the city; the city starts dreaming itself dry and everyone grows lonely (those who stay)—but everyone starts to do a kind of writing that mimics how the houses migrate—slowly, unpredictably—and those of us writing seem to lose control of our work. Such that no one actually knows if there is a city growing beneath us or if this is some complexity born out of reading.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd been traveling, mostly in my favorite city, and only had time to read a handful of pages everyday. I wasn't sure how well this approach would work for a text as dense as this, with all the multi-page paragraphs that I usually have trouble with. It's not uncommon that I wasn't sure which character a fleeting "I" or some pronoun was referring to, genders seemed unstable, and reliability and consistency were constantly subverted. But this held my attention very well, with its streams of inventive and surprising ideas, sly humor, and constant play with language.

People say you can never be quite certain that you're not in a novel, and if, while you are in this uncertain place, something strange happens, you should begin your own novel.

This made me think of Gladman's drawings:

I wanted to draw. I wanted lines to extend from my throat, the back end of a long-held note, multiple lines escaping me, and moving outward, along circuits of people's spent breath, and to see this somehow: the voice drawn outside the body, making thin, barely readable tunnels across space and between bodies and buildings, all that empty space full of last week's breathing.

And earlier, one of my favorite moments in the book, without warning:

I folded Hematois into the front pocket of my bag and breathed in the day's vapor. This wasn't the end of him, but I thought it would be good to hold him close for now.

[cycads and ferns · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Comptroller, Duder Jakobi was responsible for mapping the location of houses in the various districts of the city-country of Ravicka. Unfortunately Ravicka’s topography was fluid, the houses drifted.

“My mission to locate and reconfigure spatial logistics for two houses that exist on the same parallel geoscog referential…though physically they stand two districts apart…No.96 in the Skülburg concerned no.32 in cit Mohaly….”

Two houses were known to be entangled, House no. 32 in Mohaly and two districts away, House no. 96 in Skülberg.

“I knew the functions had everything to do with no. 32 but, because one could not inhabit that space physically, I had to go to its mate, no. 96….It wasn’t a breach. I was being strategic, because if I couldn’t find no. 96 where I had calculated it to be, then how could I know I’d actually found the site where no. 32 wasn’t?”

House no. 32 has remained ‘appropriately invisible’ but now the Comptroller finds that House no. 96 has also disappeared.

“It was too much responsibility….Had no. 32 ever taken on a physical form? It must have for us even to think of it. It struck me as peculiar that my core function in Comptrolling was monitoring houses that were solid and visible versus those that were invisible….But, it was true that there was little concern for no. 32, only in how it helped one to locate no. 96, nothing about itself. For me to head out as I did in search of it was a radical act.”

For days Jakobi tries to locate the newly missing house, using various landmarks and approaching from different directions to arrive at the precise location that House no. 96 was once located.

“I think I’m afraid people will stop using the numerical system to establish order, that, all of a sudden, people will take it upon themselves to decide how their property should exist logically. They won’t ask the Comptroller. They will remove their homes from recognition entirely. The houses move here, and every once in a while, people move their houses. It’s that disgusting….”

As House no. 96’s location continues to be a mystery, Jakobi’s frustration and anger grows and their relationship with Triti, their partner and the previous Comptroller, grows evermore contentious.

“You are used to contradictions in Ravicka; you just hope to get the ones that allow you to go on making a life doing whatever it is you do. But the houses have changed everybody's living. It's possible that all of us are out on some trek trying to find the thing we see but can't reach, or forever reaching the thing we see but again and again finding we don't know what to do with it or what to say about it….You're still putting your hands inside someone and opening to someone's hands, hoping you might lead each other to new places, to places further inside the place you've already been.”

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read these and then we’ll talk. There’s a fifth on its way.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novel is split in two - one half is an expansion of the strangeness of Ravicka, specifically relating to the moving-houses, and the other is a character who lives inside an invisible house. It is this second half that is one of the most incredible things I've ever read. Not to slight the rest of the novel, or the entire series, which is a marvel, but DAMN.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love a lesbian gulliver's travels (??) with flickering houses and flickering gender identities!

[Holden Wall · Rating 5 out of 5]

!!!!!!!!
big yes to this one. took me a while to wrap my head around the world of this book, but holy macaroni i love it!

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked Part One, probably because it's a more conventional narrative. Part Two was more "poetic" and I'm not good with poetry.
Overall though the 4 books in this series are a really interesting set of meditations on space and architecture

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe the funniest of the four books, and the final section is superb. This may have been my favorite.

[Kevin Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good writing; difficult to understand and process

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fourth book of the Ravicka series which follows two different investigators of the mysteries of Ravicka's shifting architectures & geographies. Explores rather than explains the mysteries of Ravicka. I notice that all of the characters that the books follow have a sort of solitude. Although they all have many friends & social connections in the community who they interact with, none of them really work alongside anyone else, & no one seems to live with anyone else, whether a spouse or a roommate. Although most of the characters are artists of all kinds, there's no one who really has to collaborate, such as a musician in a band or orchestra, or a player in a theater company. Is that the experience of all us artists & dilettantes of this atomized time? I find that I often gravitate towards solo pursuits, even though I'm more productive & have more fun working in a group. I really hope Gladman finishes the Ravicka novel about grasses that she mentioned in the afterward. I hope to return to Ravicka sometime, & a new novel would be just the occasion to re-read all of the books.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

The humor doesn’t land for me and the extended language doesn’t get last feeling silly, at least not until the second part where the flow picks up a lot.

[Femke Zwiep · Rating 4 out of 5]

ik begreep heel veel niet en dat komt volgens mij doordat ik de andere delen nog niet gelezen heb, maar het laatste deel van dit boek was prachtig

[Bogi Takács]

Review coming soon IY"H; I want to have a review of all the Ravicka books together. In fact that is what I wanted to post today, before my previous "Review coming soon" accidentally turned into a review. Sorry about that!!

(I need to provide feedback on manuscripts, so I'm not sure if this one will be my usual Thursday update or if that will be something I already have ready to go; maybe the December book list or a giveaway.)

Anyway, in the meanwhile I want to say that these books are magical. The best of experimental fiction. Also so serendipitious it hurts. I was having a discussion with Spouseperson about the right of way in unmarked intersections (REALLY) and I opened this book to a discussion about... well, that. You try too! :)

Disclosures: Source of the book - Lawrence Public Library / I don't know the author at all.

[Elizabeth Palumbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a strange, addicting book set in a world where physical space changes around you. Makes me think about a whole host of things from the way we identify where we are, to the active-passive relationship we have with the world around us, who really is the active party and who is the passive.

The writing is absolutely beautiful and engaging. It can be challenging at times to figure out what exactly is going on, but to me that was the fun part, trying to piece the world of Ravicka together from little bits of information.

I will definitely have to go back and reread, this is the type of book that you really pick up a lot more the longer you mull over it, and the more times you go back. I'm excited to read more about the Ravickians in her other books.

[Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Further and further we go. Deeper and deeper into Ravicka. Way down.

An interesting project that I will probably never attempt: Read the 4 books of the Ravicka series in reverse order and see if the movement from this book (book 4- a very (very) internalized view language and writing and communication and architecture) to book 1 (a tourist without reference navigating those same topics) would work. I have a sneaking suspicion that it would, whether or not that's the intent of the series.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hallucinogenic mind-opener. Somewhere between a prose poem and a science-fiction novel about the potentialities of human perception, this inventive and original short book, rich with absurd humor and weird mystery, belongs on the shelf close to Kafka, Calvino, or Angela Carter. As soon as I’d finished it, I knew I’d read it again.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ummmmmm
This was a book.
Was there a plot? Maybe.
Were there characters? Yes I think so.
What was it about?
...houses? ...and drawing? Maybe?

I picked this up for a book club meeting that was ultimately cancelled but gosh would I love to talk to someone else who has read this.
It’s short but it took a long time to read.

[Rory Fraser · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last section of this book is like that dream you had where you wrote something absolutely life-changing which you forgot as soon as you woke up, except someone wrote it down for you and it was as good as you thought.

[Patrik Sampler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is brilliant, sublime. It lives up to or exceeds my expectations of what I've read by Gladman previously. If there's one complaint it might be the afterword. While, interesting, it also dispels some of the mysterious feeling I would like to have retained.

[Siobhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous and strange, finding a place between strict structure and flowing musings.

[Emrys Donaldson]

Meandering and fantastical. Reminded me of a more lyrical version of China Miéville’s The City and the City. Looking forward to reading the others in the series to learn more about Ravicka.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The big question occupying my mind when I finished HOUSES OF RAVICKA was: what's the difference between a great Renee Gladman book and one that just...isn't.

The first three books in the Ravicka series, EVENT FACTORY, THE RAVICKANS, and ANA PATOVA CROSSES A BRIDGE, are three of my favorite modern novels. I gave each of them five stars, and I adore them. But I didn't think MORELIA was anything like up to that standard, and, much as it pains me to say it, I don't think HOUSES OF RAVICKA is either.

Putting a finger on why is maddening. The prose has the same looping, elliptical quality, the plots have the same lack of resolution, the philosophizing about writing and perception and architecture is all there. The best I can offer is that the *mood* doesn't hold. Where the previous three books perfectly capture the wonder and terror of seeing things go wrong without being able to either understand or describe exactly *why*, HOUSES loses momentum in its technobabble about Geoscography, in images that seem important but never recur (the encounter with the Strange Building seems like it's going to be central to the book until it isn't), and in the most tiresome characters Gladman has created. (Comptroller, I served with Ana Patova. I knew Ana Patova. Ana Patova was a friend of mine. Comptroller, you're no Ana Patova.)

This doesn't mean the book is *bad*. In fact, the last chapter is probably on par with the best of Gladman's writing, as it dances sparklingly until hurtling like a spear to that brilliant last line. But as a whole, it didn't work for me like the others did. In the afterword, Gladman describes how this was the most difficult book to write of any she's produced, and I think she didn't quite get to a point where the seams don't show.

Your mileage may vary. Most of the other reviewers are a lot more positive. But for me, this one was so close, and yet so far.

[Paul Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I MISUNDERSTOOD THE sequence of the Ravicka books and so read this one, the fourth, right after reading the first (Event Factory), skipping the second and third, but I ended by enjoying it even more than I did the first, so I suppose no harm was done. I certainly intend to get to the second and third when I can.

Houses in Ravicka have...hmm, what to call them, spiritual partner houses? That is, for every house there is another house to which it corresponds, in some mysterious, never made explicit way. The Comptroller, our narrator for most of Houses of Ravicka, is embarrassed to mortification by his, or her (the Comptroller's gender sometimes switches) inability to locate Number 32, the partner of Number 96. The Comptroller is an i-dotting, t-crossing sort of person, a minder of p's and q's, the author of Regulating the Book of Regulations, and her/his bureaucratic discomfiture was both easy to sympathize with and entertaining.

The beauty of these books, for me, is their ability to hybridize the sci-fi-as-anthropology world-building of Delany or LeGuin with the intoxicating indeterminacy of Beckett or Lispector. Even though the last part of the novel is narrated by the person in 32, we never learn why or how the house became imperceptible to the Comptroller, just as we never quite settle on the Comptroller's gender identity. That seems exactly as it should be--the reward of the novel is not in the resolving of mysteries but in sentences like this one:

"Seeing my coordinate for the first time and knowing it was my coordinate was like being in two separate novels--at the beginning of one, the end of the other--and having those two novels write toward one another but as if with an obstacle between them, such as a massive eruption in the landscape that you must walk around in order to progress, and it'll take decades to do this."

[Lyuba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truly experimental. Like nothing else I have read in contemporary literature.

Ravicka is an odd place, constantly changing, its residents bizarre ("I hadn't felt any waves of emotion in over a week", "so you had no choice but to join them, unless you wanted to do a backflip of regret, which I hadn't been able to muster since I was young"), its buildings move and disappear.

The reader wonders are the people in the novel dreaming or is the city itself dreaming of them:
"I was drawing when it dawned on me that I was bringing things into the light that would have preferred to stay unseen, undefined. You risked the invisible architectures by occupying them; you force them to act outside of themselves. Yet, this is what they asked of you. They wanted a conversation, although not so much with the human body as with the bodies of the hard buildings, but they needed our bodies to build the tension. We were like poetic lines being woven into prose."

Boundaries between places are broken, angles are impossible. The story is a confusing whirlwind of searching for a house, walking street after street and not finding it. It's about where we are in the world, spatial relation.
"It's possible that all of us are out on some trek trying to find the thing we see but can't reach, or forever reaching the thing we see but again and again finding we don't know what to do with it or what to say about it."

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't read, I try to tell myself. Books don't exist. I'm lying in the woods that run along the A5 with my face against the moist ground, reading the last book. Some hum extends from the city, and the walls of every home creak: a single, electrical bend that divides time. Only a third of the residents bear a record of the break, only half of that third had actually heard it, only a third of that half of a third reflected on it, and just a few of these tired, still deeply dreaming souls, a sixteenth of the third of that half of a third, connect this miniscule eruption to those from previous nights and previous residences. I don't see anything in the ground of the forest, but I hear pages turning in the book. The book, these creaks in the walls of houses, the hum of the city, the lines in the asphalt, have backed me up to the forest, my face against the ground. I was trying to tell you what it means to see a city that itself sees, that looks out of its structures toward some imagined place, some activating force. We have a whole science that says the buildings of Ravicka are on the move-the houses, the buildings-and although the science doesn't say it's because the houses see that they move, it's clear that they move because they see.





*

[Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. Recommended for those who have considered a vacation in Prague or Kyev, find human social customs universally absurd, occasionally have a strong impression that geography is changing behind the scenes, and appreciate the difficulty of transposing one kind of artistic experience into others.

This description from the afterword is a good sample:
"I regarded the novel as a layering of multiple concepts within a 120-page expanse; these spaces took shape as time, topography, tones of feeling, signals for events, figures crossing, and were like folds convulsing simultaneously through language. To write [or to read --C.] was to wander through these folds, to try to see space as each of these things, always shifting, undoing, and to make the texts I built through this seeing vibrate."

Would reread.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fourth and final book in the Ravickian series. We start out from the POV of the city comptroller - the language is much more technical and particular than the previous books although as technical as the comptroller is attempting to be, things are nonetheless falling apart. There are buildings that have up and moved from the places they ought to be. The technicality of description coupled with the confusion of the comptroller creates a very nice tension. Then in the second part of the book we are with the woman who lives in one of the invisible houses that the comptroller had been searching for. The woman in the second part of the novel lives in the spaces in between and often is blurring her inferiority with her exteriority. This is my favorite book of the series and it’s been a real delight reading all four of the Ravickian novels!