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Palimpsest is the best novel you may have only heard about through word of mouth and whispers on the Internet. This is possibly fitting considering its themes of secrecy and intimacy that pervade its lush storytelling, but this book deserves every bit of attention it gets, and more.
Delight? Check. Instruct? I think so. The story itself is like the jeweled cockroaches of the city of Palimpsest, the city of dreams to which immigrants who encounter the city are inexorably drawn back...a city that is both reverie and nightmare, often at once, its passports spread every time its nightly visitors from the waking world take another lover. You follow four immigrants, a Quarto, into Palimpsest - and live there yourself, for as long as the book holds out. Every bit of even that small fragment of the story, however, is better read than related. Like all of award-winning author Valente's books, the richness and complexity of Palimpsest is difficult to convey in a review that strives not to reveal secrets.
Better to just read it. You won't be sorry.
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Palimpsest by Catherynne M Valente
popelizbet, April 23, 2009
Palimpsest is the best novel you may have only heard about through word of mouth and whispers on the Internet. This is possibly fitting considering its themes of secrecy and intimacy that pervade its lush storytelling, but this book deserves every bit of attention it gets, and more.Delight? Check. Instruct? I think so. The story itself is like the jeweled cockroaches of the city of Palimpsest, the city of dreams to which immigrants who encounter the city are inexorably drawn back...a city that is both reverie and nightmare, often at once, its passports spread every time its nightly visitors from the waking world take another lover. You follow four immigrants, a Quarto, into Palimpsest - and live there yourself, for as long as the book holds out. Every bit of even that small fragment of the story, however, is better read than related. Like all of award-winning author Valente's books, the richness and complexity of Palimpsest is difficult to convey in a review that strives not to reveal secrets.
Better to just read it. You won't be sorry.
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)