Palimpsest: A Novel Paperback – 24 February 2009

This is the most pointless and bizarre story I ever read. And I'm rather fond of bizarre stories. But this one...nope.

To list all the things that are wrong with Palimpsest, as a novel, would take more time than I have. I could fill up a sheet of vellum made from the whole side of a sneep, scour off the words, and fill it up again and I wouldn't be done listing the rules which Cat Valente has broken.Oh, dear.I've done it again.Nobody's ever going to come to me for a dust jacket quote, are they?Let me start again.Palimpsest is the most breathtaking story I have read in a long time. How long? Possibly longer than I've been alive. My initial impression of it was of a clockwork whirlwind... something both chaotic and precise, and having read through it twice now I think that metaphor is extremely apt. There is a lot going on... there are, as Warren Ellis said, more ideas on a single page "than on a hundred pages of anything else"... but it all comes to bear, somehow, it all fits together.So why did I open by saying there are so many things wrong with it as a novel?Not because of the quality of the writing, nor the vividness of the setting or the character of the characters... but there are ways things are done, you know.I should know.I've been told about them oh so many times.There are formulae to be followed and there are protocols to be observed. There is a structure to these things, you see, and if you don't follow that structure, if you don't have a beginning, a middle, an end, a hero and a villain and some external conflict and a love interest and a kiss...That doesn't matter. Cat Valente has found a way through. She has clawed open a passage and she has pushed her child through it.I could sum up the story for you. I could give you a Hollywood style nutshell that would probably start with the words "four strangers" who were "verbed together by noun" and then went on an "adjective journey" to a place "beyond intangible quality".But you wouldn't have any idea what the story was actually like. You'd probably be picturing something quite different. There are kisses and there is urgency and there is conflict, but the focus is never where it "ought" to be according to the patterns we've all learned, and with good reason. Cat Valente isn't looking at those patterns, she's looking at something much older and fainter, something that was written long ago and then obliterated, but not perfectly and not forever.Palimpsest isn't the Great American Novel, folks.It is the Great Human Fable. It is the Great World Metaphor. It is the Great Universe Myth.So I won't try to sum it up. I'll simply say, it's good. It's damned good. It will get under your skin and you will feel it moving around at night. What do I have to say to get you to read this book, to get you to buy it? Yes, I want you to buy it. If you're as privileged as I am to have somebody put a copy in your hands to read, then I will not begrudge you that joy, but when you're able, go out and buy one. The printing must sell out. The next printing must, too. We have to widen the doorway she's made. We have to make it big enough for the trains of heaven to roll through.Publishing industry, are you watching this? I have talked to people this week who said, "I don't care for most fantasy novels but I loved this book." I have talked to people whose knowledge of genre fiction is more encyclopedic than mine who said "I loved this book." Get the idea? This is a novel which impresses people. There is an audience for it.There was a time when we told stories where the conflicts did not have to involve megalomaniacal villains stroking monkeys (cf. A Wizard of Earthsea vs. the Sci-Fi miniseries with a similar name). There was a time when it was enough ("enough!" she says with a laugh) that a story was merely ("merely!" she chokes) beautiful and moving and powerful and engaging, it did not have to conform as well to tracks laid out along the paths of previous successful storytellers as charted by astrologers and geologists but could burst free and fly however it desired to.A story should only ("only!") have to be excellent at being what it is, not at following what has come before.This book gives me hope.On the train ride home, I wrote several thousand words of a novel I'd long since given up on, as it wasn't the right sort of story for my usual model and it didn't seem likely to find a passage elsewhere. But I have the map on my skin now. I know the way home.Buy the book.I have some joyous weeping/writing to do.

Wow! I've loved all Ms Valente's and have been waiting with increasing impatience for the release of Palimpsest.It does not disappoint! the language, is beautiful and rich, poetry on the page, each word perfectly placed to follow the last.This is a book to be treasured, to be read over and over again, to be carried round and dipped into.

I was pretty excited to read Palimpsest, and honestly, it’s not quite like anything I’ve read. Calling it fantasy just isn’t quite right- there’s nothing of the thrills and excitement of typical fantasy. It’s more like a leisurely stroll through someone else’s dream. If that sounds like your thing, go ahead and read it. (Mild spoilers after this point!)Valente’s writing really is beautiful, but the first oh, 60% of the book is mostly just an exhibition of her vocabulary, with very little in the way of plot. The plot doesn’t really come together until you’re about 80% of the way through the book, and it wraps up pretty anticlimactically. There’s no twists to be found here, and no real tension. If a threat pops up, it’s resolved almost immediately. No one really has any qualms about leaving the real world to permanently relocate to Palimpsest- none of the main characters have any real-world ties they would leave behind.I felt a little like November is something of a self-insert for the author. Indeed, she’s the most special of the four main characters- the city seems to beat her up the worst, she receives the highest rewards, she is the glue that pulls their emigration plan together, the plot seems to center a lot on how special she is, that she has a lot of help to make her emigration possible- you see what I’m getting at?My favorite parts were the parts where you learn more about the way people seek out Palimpsest in the real world (in Kyoto there’s a special club and there seems to be some kind of mailing list- but everything is strictly offline!) and I also loved learning about the inner workings and history of Palimpsest. I gladly would have abandoned the plot and just read about the history of the city and how people try to find ways to get around! I really wish there had been more of that, as that’s where the writing was most alive and I found myself most deeply engrossed in the book.To be honest, I’m not totally sure who I would say this book is for. Fantasy readers will probably find it a little dull, but even though sex is a major part of the book, it’s definitely not romance by any stretch of the imagination, and the sex scenes aren’t really all that erotic. I think the people who would most enjoy this book are the ones who could see themselves seeking out Palimpsest, not for an adventure, but just because they had to know what else is out there.

Well, i'm struggling through this book. I suppose it depends on how much else is going on in your own life, as to whether your attention doesn't wander off too often. I do love Ms. Valente's lyrical, interesting use of the language. One tends to drift off a bit, i suppose because the protaganists seem so unlike us and the situations dream-like.......It seems so natural this world, yet it isn't.I have just finished another of her books, "The Ophans' Tale, in the Night Garden", which is also a series of linked stories. I loved the Russian Doll style of story telling in this book, a story within a story, told by someone in the previous story....AAAAGH! but very beautiful.In between though, i had to read another author, type of book, one with a real begining, a middle and an end just to get my head back in the - nearly- real world!It's clever, thought provoking stuff, I think i'd give it 4 stars.