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PRIVATE NOVELIST

Name: PRIVATE NOVELIST
Author: Nell Zink
ISBN: 978-0-062-45830-8

by Nell Zink ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2016

Proof that experimental fiction can be fun.

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Early work by the acclaimed author of Nicotine (2016), Mislaid (2015), and Wallcreeper (2014).

“It having become apparent that I should write a novel, my next concern became which novel I should write. An obvious choice was Avner Shats’ recent debut, Sailing Toward the Sunset.” Thus begins Sailing Toward the Sunset by Avner Shats, which comprises the first half of this idiosyncratic (obviously) book. There’s an explanatory (sort of) foreword by the aforementioned Shats, and something like an account of how this peculiar work came to be is proffered by the narrator. Here’s the idea: an admirer of Zink’s writing, Shats encouraged her to write a novel. She responded by sending him her translation of his own novel—a chapter each day—during the month of December 1998. Zink (or the first-person narrator who may or may not be the author) is undaunted by the fact that she can’t read Hebrew (the language in which Shats wrote his novel), and she gets going by questioning the very concept of translation. What is ostensibly an English edition of a story about an Israeli spy turns, before it begins, into autobiography (or faux autobiography), a critique of trends in contemporary “literary” fiction, a consideration of the epistolary novel, and a short story interlude—and that’s just the first four chapters. “European Story for Avner Shats”—which makes up the second part of Private Novelist—is (or so we are told) a writing exercise inspired by prompts provided by Shats. It begins with the following declaration: “This story will be composed in bad English.” Zink earned critical acclaim with her debut, The Wallcreeper, and she made the National Book Award longlist with Mislaid (2015). Private Novelist would never have been published without those successes (no less a personage than Jonathan Franzen tried, and failed, to sell the manuscript). This is not an indictment. Readers who enjoy smart, playful postmodernism will be glad that Private Novelist has finally been made public.

Proof that experimental fiction can be fun.

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-062-45830-8

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SISTER EUROPE
by Nell Zink

- BOOK REVIEW
AVALON
by Nell Zink

- BOOK REVIEW
DOXOLOGY
by Nell Zink

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HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

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An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
TOM'S CROSSING
by Mark Z. Danielewski

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LITTLE BLUE KITE
by Mark Z. Danielewski

- BOOK REVIEW
HADES
by Mark Z. Danielewski

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ANIMAL FARM

A FAIRY STORY

by George Orwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1946

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A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.