What doyouthink?
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367 pages, Paperback
First published February 24, 2009
"To touch a person... to sleep with a person... is to become a pioneer, "she whispered then," a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to them. I have been so many times to countries like that. I have learned how to make coffee in all their ways, how to share food, how to comfort, how to dance in the native ways."Valente's trademark lush, ornamental, stylized, and vivid, almost paintbrush-stroke-like writing is amplified in this novel.Every sentence is surreal, dripping with imagery, soaking with color, saturated with emotions. The writing is melodic and lyrical almost to the absurd, to the point that you almost want to shake it off you and return to the world of short phrases and transparent meanings. Valente is excellent at weaving a gorgeous tapestry of language, zeroing in on small details and scenes and describing them with such poignancy that you feel almost trapped in the surreal world that she creates.It's wonderful to read it, but it's also almost exhausting, since everything is raw and on the edge, everything is exaggerated, everything is painfully exposed and amplified.The words swirl, and so do the emotions contained in them. The disjointed and staggering narration, fading in and out like in a dream, is both enchanting and oppressing, and I did love the combination of those.
"November has been taken, she knows this, and one does not argue with the one who takes. No one whose father was a librarian is ignorant of their Greek myth: when Hades hauls you into his chariot, you do not argue that he has been rude not to ask if you really wanted to go. "
"This is Palimpsest, November. This is the real world. Nothing comes without pain and death."
"But this is how you do it: through the body and into the world. You fuck; you travel. That sounds crude, and you know, it usually is. It's usually ugly, and fat, and sweaty, and lonely. Luckily, it's also usually quick. But afterwards... we find a place where we belong."I was torn about the rating for this one. I'm a huge Valente fan, being completely won over byDeathless(one of the best books I've read this year),The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland...andSilently and Very Fast.All of those have instantly grabbed my attention and held me, enchanted, in their charms and embrace until the very last page.Palimpsest,however, was a very different experience,winning my affection very slowly, almost reluctantly, sometimes pushing me away, sometimes luring me in, but still in the end maintaining a firm grip on me - just like the surreal city of Palimpsest did on the four characters in this book.
"You need me, "said Xiaohui breathlessly, pulling November over her, sliding hands under her belt to claw and knead." You need me. "I'm glad I did not give up on this book. While it has its flaws, while it's so heavily stylized that it almost throws you out of the story while simultaneously somehow immersing you in it, while endorsing choices and actions that I normally would very vehemently disagree with, this book did provide me with a very unique experience in one of the weirdest universes created on paper. It made me think and ache and sigh and long for things that lurk at the bottom of my murky soul. I loved the frequent mentions ofThe Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland- apparently written because of fans' requests after this book.And for all of that, I'm rounding up the 3.5-star rating to 4 stars.Valente's writing just has that something special that speaks to my soul, and I cannot resist it.
"Don’t you mean ‘I need you'?" whispered November in the girl’s ear.
"No," she sighed, arching her back, tipping her chin up, making herself easy to kiss, easy to fall into, easy to devour. "You’ll see. You’ll see."
"There are no tigers for us, just a city, waiting, and it loves us, in whatever ways a city can love. "
"Maybe the tigers are there. Maybe they're just better at hiding than trains and tenors."
He is a breeder of snails and dwells in a house of three stories. In his youth he covered each of the floors in rich soils of black and red, leaves of gold and green, grains brown and sweet, violet petals as thick as a pat of butter. In his middle age, birch and fig saplings sprouted through the kitchen tile; hedges ring the furniture. His great petit-gris slowly move from parlor to wash-closet, gorging themselves in paroxysms of helical rapture. They mate in the chimney, sing softly the hymns of snails on the windowsills when the moon blanches the verdant paint to black.
November veils herself and takes the finch by its roasted beak, pushing it into her mouth with two fingers, her remaining blessings. It is sweet, at first, the burnished skin and meat, glazed in something like brandy and something like plum wine. But as she chews - methodically, for it fills her mouth to bursting - the organs rupture, bitter and bilious, a taste like despair, like the loss of love. And deeper, the bones shiver and crack and cut her - the taste of her blood flows in, salty as tears shed over a ruined body, mingling with the marrow, and it is sweet again, sweet as herself, herself remaining at the end of all trials. And November can see why the veil is needed. No god should bear witness to a woman devouring a meal of herself.