Palimpsest: A Novel

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.

Achingly beautiful. Make time for this book and it will reward you. Not one to be read in snatches, but to be savoured like a fine wine or gourmet food.

This is an incredible book. Cat Valente's honeyed explosion of ideas and images is as addictive as the dream city she has created: hugely tragic, yearning, surreal and overpowering. I loved the fairytale setting of her "In the night garden" books, but this is a modern-day story with a far darker feel. In amongst the decadence and otherness she tells of the obsessive needs of four individuals and how far they'll go to get the only thing they can see. It builds, and the ending is just perfection.Her best yet, from an author I already greatly admired - this book deserves some serious recognition! Warren Ellis had it exactly right: "A book of mad inventive wonder: there are more ideas on one page of this than on a hundred of anything else, told in stunning, jewelled language. --Warren Ellis".

Yes, the language is exquisite, but i must confess after In the Night Garden books this left me cold. I was intrigued but soon everything settled into a kind of predictability. My fault perhaps, but i just couldn't care about the characters and whether they actually got what they wanted. From one perspective, the book is very "now" in the themes it explores, the desire for gratification, the desire for escape, etc. but because i just couldn't empathise it left me sadly cold. Oh well... maybe i just don't dream this way.

Wonders and tragedies, joy and sorrow, sex and sacrifice, betrayal and forgiveness. Cat Valente weaves the story of four persons bound by fate, by loneliness and by the city of Palimpsest, setting, character and narrator, mater terribilis of war and love.

I got to page three. This will suit you if you are studying an MA in women's lit and you secretly like a bit of fantasy but want to make sure people remember how 'literary' you are 'n all.

This is a book to make you fall in love with the English language all over again. Imaginative, evocative, seductive it is a love affair that leaves you longing for the next encounter.

'Palimpsest' has the fervid texture of a drugged dream. Dreams can stir powerful emotions whilst you are caught in their grip, immersed in their almost-logic, almost-sense...Contrast that then, with how you reflect upon your dreams (or other altered-state episodes) when you awaken, and the rest of your mind comes into play. I myself wonder at how such trivial, banal or just plain nonsensical events, experiences could have seemed so freighted with meaning, how that altered state caused you to assign such weight of significance to so little substance, to make so many connections on no real evidence and how waking life with its mundanities and effort is so much the richer, complex and rewarding.Like dreams, I find this book unsatisfying, and for much the same reasons. You may find quite the reverse...but how do you then find your life?

Vier Menschen erforschen ein Rätsel: Sie brechen aus einer tristen Welt bei Tage auf und verfolgen in einer nächtlichen Stadt, einem Traum gleich, jeder ein eigenes Herzensziel. Was hat es mit dieser Stadt auf sich, wie sind diese Vier verbunden, werden sie den Preis zahlen können, der ihnen ihren innigsten Wunsch erfüllt?Das Buch ist schauderlich-schön und poetisch: Sinnliche Szenen und die Gabe der Autorin, in alltäglichen Banalitäten kleine Wunder zu entdecken, bereiten ein unglaubliches Lesevergnügen um der Worte selbst willen, das dem Leser lange in Erinnerung bleiben wird. Vereinzelt gibt es abstoßende Szenen, bei denen man sich über ihre geistige Gesundheit wundert. Oft braucht man ein Wörterbuch, denn das Englisch ist anspruchsvoll bis bemüht.Die Handlung an sich kommt in diesem Buch allerdings zu kurz, zu sehr erscheint das Buch ein weiterer Gedichtband der Autorin. Die Erklärungen, wegen derer man sich durch das letzte Drittel des Buches kämpft (die Poesie stumpft irgendwann ab), bleiben aus, und es bleibt der Geschmack zurück, daß die einmalig phantasievolle Rahmengeschichte lediglich ein Sammelband für die verschiedene Ideen der Autorin war.

Not entirely what I expected, but it' fun to read and surprising at times. Only as disappointing as the humans described.

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

I was surprised by how bad this book is. I really liked this author's western reimagining of Snow White, my kids read her fairy tale, and I recently saw this listed on a reputable website as one of the 100 best fantasy novels of all time. As you know by now, it is the story of an alternate fantasy world that one may reach only by having sex with someone who has been there, and who is marked with a tattoo. But every fantasy novel has some way of reaching the imaginary world at issue - a wardrobe, for example - and so this is really just a gimmick. Once we get to the imaginary world, how good is the story? Well, in this case, not very good, just sort of overblown formless descriptions with no driving plot, and an overuse of the word "great" instead of "big." If I had to describe a plot, I guess I would say it's about a group of farflung characters, each of which is trying to gain permanent entry to a mysterious, sexual dreamworld. The problem is this: Everyone wants to get there, but it's not clear why; it's a pretty wretched, sadistic place, and the characters go through all manner of hell there, from full-body bee stings to dismemberment (fingers and tongues). I wouldn't voluntarily lose my tongue to live in a penthouse overlooking Central Park, and I definitely wouldn't lose my tongue to get a pad in the horrible fantasy world described in this book. There are some nice characterizations and diversions along the way, but the central conceit is not successful.

I first encountered Catherynne M Valente's work in her fabulous Orphan's Tales series- which I highly recommend. For some reason I was under the impression that Palimpsest was her first novel, but it turns out she wrote it well after Orphan's Tales and to be honest that changes my perception of it a bit. Compared to some of her other work it felt like she was just finding her voice. That's not necessarily a bad quality (it's certainly reassuring to a young person just finding their artistic voice), but it's not what you would expect of something so far into an author's career. Edit: to be clear, I've read a bunch of Valente's work and I actually think Palimpsest is better than her average. I'm just describing certain a quality to the writing here.Anyway, what I loved: The four main characters were very well developed. Sei, November, and Oleg all had deep and affecting back stories that did a lot to inform their actions later in the story. Ludovico's characterization was a bit weaker, but certainly not bad. I loved the descriptive and metaphorical language though I understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea. The sex/romance elements were not at all heteronormative and there weren't any relationships that seemed obligatory or not justified by the rest of the story. It also doesn't have any sexual abuse or unacknowledged sexism-- annoyingly rare in current media-that-contains-sex-scenes. Contrary to many of the negative reviews, there is a plot, it's just that the plot is unexpectedly simple compared to the complex language it's written in and it's based more in personal discovery than in action. The structure of the plot was very well done. The gender balance seemed pretty equal or even tipped more towards female characters. Most of the characters seemed to be bisexual, so it's not heteronormative, though I know some lesbians who might object that their same-sex-exclusive attraction is being erased by the implication that everyone can be bi- I'm not going to get into those politics here.Things I didn't like so much: yes, every chapter has a sex scene. The first four chapters (or is it the 2nd-5th? there might be a prologue, I forget) all largely revolve around their respective sex scenes. If I wasn't already familiar with the author or if I didn't trust her I might have put it down after that because personally I find sex scenes boring and overdone and I'm tired of how so much media targeted for adults revolves around sex these days. Later in the book, however, the sex scenes become less important since the things going on in Palimpsest and in the real world become more important and prominent. Given the premise that sex is how one gets to Palimpsest, I can't see how she could have avoided having the sex scenes, so I guess they're kind of a necessary "evil" (in quotation marks because I'm not a puritan or whatever). So I guess just know that if the sex scenes at the start of the book bother you, they will pass.And no, this isn't erotica. The sex scenes aren't super graphic. They're written in poetic language but not in an especially sexy way. Even for the characters, the sex isn't necessarily especially pleasurable, much of the time their main concern is getting into Palimpsest. To properly appreciate this book you have to be able to take in sex scenes pretty neutrally- without outrage or discomfort and also without expecting to get off on them yourself. I expect this cuts back on who will find the book to their taste.

Palimpsest is the story of a sexually transmitted city, and of four such pilgrims who each encounter the city and find that they need to return. The pilgrims are residents of the world as we-the-readers know it, but Palimpsest is built on fairy logic and surrealism. The author describes the city and its inhabitants with lush language and vivid imagery, anchored by the deep, emotional truths that govern Palimpsest’s world as surely as the laws of physics govern our own. If the mark of a great storyteller is the ability to tell you things you know to be untrue and then make your heart believe in them anyway, then Catherynne Valente is a master of the craft.The city of Palimpsest thrives on human need. Those who have visited are left with a gut-deep yearning that slowly leaches the color out of the rest of the world. Palimpsest is a compulsion – the kind of desire that the Buddha warned you about. Possibly someone who is perfectly satisfied with their life on Earth would not feel such need to return as the four protagonists do, but perfection is boring; the flaws and scars and traumas that the characters carry back and forth between our world and Palimpsest are as compelling as the city itself, and just as richly detailed. Palimpsest and all its wonders draw the readers into the book and tantalize us with possibilities, but ultimately it’s the loss and need and loneliness of November, Ludovico, Sei, and Oleg that compel us to stay and see their journey through to the end. Along the way we get to make sense of Palimpsest itself, as the disparate, absurd details we have learned get slowly and satisfyingly knotted together into a cohesive whole.I could say so much more about the book, but ultimately my own words will fall short, and if you haven’t read it you deserve the opportunity to discover all of Palimpsest’s secrets for yourself.

I've read some several of the reviews to be found here, and of the people who rated it low because they did not understand it, and admitted to their lack of understanding, I urge you to go back and try reading it again. Read it slowly and surely, every word and letter of it, and let it paint a picture rather than simply chasing a story. The story comes in time, built by bricks of letters and mortar of punctuation, and it is a solid and beautiful story.To those who come to the reviews of this book entirely unknowing of it I'll say this. I decided to read this book because of the album Quartered by S.J. Tucker, a collection of songs inspired by this story. It was out of the desire for a new book and nothing else, no great accolades or recommendations for others, merely a stretch of boredom and a remembered song. I have to say that I'm glad of that confluence, because I've loved every minute of reading this book and fully expect to read it again. Insofar as the characters and story go, I'll simply reiterate that the book should be read with care and allowed to build rather than as a chase, and that my favorite characters were Casimira and November, who I felt I already knew from my love of the songs they inspired.

Have you ever eaten Vosges Chocolates? (if not, I recommend you do so!) You read the bar description, and it's like... "mushroom....chocolate?" It's weird. And it's so intense and unique and you can only eat so much at a time. You really only want like, a truffle, or a square.Cat Valente's Palimpsest is a little like that."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 it 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."You can't read paragraphs like that all in a gulp. They require a little cogitating.What Valente excels at in this book is worldbuilding. There is a plot, and it even has a beginning and a middle and an end. There are characters, and they are not unsympathetic. But they sort of exist to showcase the world, which is amazing. I love the conceit of the book, the way the world unfolds in front of you. it's a tiny bit like falling into Imajica, but, if possible, weirder. Or differently weird. A factory that creates biomechanical pests/spies. A river of clothes and fog. A church of silence. Trains that rut and mate and run wild. It is a sad and lonely book, in a lot of ways, with a lot of lost people in the world yearning for something that they cannot have, a heaven beyond their reach.Read if: You enjoy floral prose shading to florid, you love exquisite and delicate otherworldliness. You are lonely and in search of something. You have ever sought to connect with people using your body. You like the kind of story that follows separate threads until they ultimately collide.Skip if: Ornate language annoys you. You will be uncomfortable about sex as a means to an end, as anonymous, as sometimes a punishment. You want a strong narrative line. You read books for character development.

pal·imp·sestˈpaləm(p)ˌsest/nouna manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.Magnificent read! Almost dream-like as you go through the encounters and adventures of the four individuals in this tale.A key maker, beekeeper, train fanatic, and a bookbinder: all wanting a new life. It begins with the factory and the creator responsible for the city of Palimpsest's vermin (and other things.) Yes. Cockroaches have never been so pretty. Rats and squirrels; all pressed like tinker parts of a robotics industry. It then would shift the story to our four main characters: two women and two men. Each have their own miserable lives and wish for more, which is how they find the city. Finding someone with a piece of the map and spending one sensual night with them allows them to go to that place on the map. One day and when they sleep, they awake in their own world. People around the world with bits of the map would travel anywhere and everywhere in search of other bits of the map. It almost becomes an addiction of sorts. The problem is staying in Palimpsest, permanently.I would love one day to explore the depths of Valente's mind. If her mind is as beautiful as her words then it would be wonderful to think like this woman. There is an influence of Japanese culture all over this novel and I love it. I am fascinated with the Japanese and their traditions. This author has spent some time in Japan and it peeks out of her wonderful writings.My emotions reading this combined awe, envy, amazement, sorrow, and joy.I don't have any other book like this to compare. I love it and it is probably my favorite book ever.

Palimpsest is an enchanted city, beyond our own waking world, ruled over by the impetuous Casimira, Queen of the Insects. It's a place where war veterans become chimeras, where the dead are buried in bamboo, and where trains pulse with life. Four people -- Oleg the Locksmith, November the Beekeeper, Ludovico the Bookbinder, and Sei the Train Enthusiast -- are about to earn their passports to Palimpsest, through the magic of a one night stand. Those who've been to Palimpsest return with a tattoo: a map of the place they've been. The only way to get in is by having sex with someone who has been there.But Palimpsest isn't a fairy-world. It isn't a place for those who are happy and content. This is a place where the sad and the troubled, escape to. Oleg is mentally ill; he's in love with the ghost of his dead sister. November, is OCD and alone, caretaker to her beehives. Ludovico is madly in love with his wife, but she's been cheating on him and now she's leaving him behind. And Sei is the daughter of a madwoman; after her mother's death she falls in love with trains, riding them for hours around Japan.Palimpsest is great at solving peoples problems, giving the lucky dreamers exactly what they want. Its a place where your strongest desires are revealed and appeased. The problem with traveling to another world through your dreams, is that eventually you have to wake up. There is a way to stay in Palimpsest forever, Casimira made sure of that. It's up to November, Ludovico, Oleg and Sei to be clever enough to find their way in, permanently. They have to find the way and be willing to pay the price.The ideas that insects are built and not born, and that there is a track run by mechanical racehorses, lends a touch of steampunk to this sexually transmitted fantasy world. And while I appreciated CMV's imagination, the beautiful imagery that made this story worth reading, also threatened the progression of the plot-line. I appreciated the use of irony toward the end of the story; as characters tracked each other down, as they began to piece together the key to entering Palimpsest, they each begin to think "I suffered, so So-n-So, could get in without suffering." A laughable idea. No one gets in unless they first suffer.This story is a tragedy with a setting as beautiful as it is monstrous, and capped off with a surprisingly cheery ending.PS.I tagged this as "erotic" because sex is a major plot device, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it porn.

Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente tells the story of four lost and lonely travelers as they journey to a strange and beautiful city, a city that exists beyond the veil of dreams. Imagine a place of surreal delights, of bizarre masquerade balls and holy churches in which odd creatures worship in utter silence. This is Palimpsest, a city that is neither dream nor reality for those who stumble into its borders. Of course, to visit isn't enough, never enough. Visitors long for residency, they desire to make Palimpsest their reality. Such desires, however, come at a cost.For reasons we don't early know, people exist in our world who bear marks on their skin, black tattoos that appear to be pieces of an otherworldly map. These people are gateways to Palimpsest, to enter involves sex and the heavy sleep after orgasm. Those who sleep after climax in our world wake to wander the streets of Palimpsest, the part of the map on their partner's body, except in the case of first time visitors. First timers are required to visit a certain fortune-teller, a woman with the head of a frog. She sees clients only in groups of four, these four are then bound together, a family of sorts. Whenever in Palimpsest, no matter how far apart, these four strangers intimately share each other's experiences. They taste the same tastes, they feel each other's pleasure and pain. When morning comes to Palimpsest, visitors then wake in our world. New-comers also wake with a mark of their own, a new gateway to this gorgeous and sometimes cruel city. Permanent residence is elusive, but not impossible. The novel follows four characters who have lost something in our world and desperately hope to find it in Palimpsest.Valente has created something absolutely brilliant in Palimpsest. Her decadent use of language brings so much life into a world that few have the skill to even imagine, let alone write into existence. To me, Palimpsest is an intricate metaphor for the nature of sex and relationships. Unlike any liquor, any drug, sex can take a person completely outside of their reality. In one sense, sex can be a hollow, empty act, a temporary escape from one's broken life. Yet, in another sense, sex with the right person can be a perfect sacrament. Two people inside one another creating a world of their own. Sex doesn't have to be about running away from something awful, it can be about moving toward something amazing. Sex with the right person can feel like going home after being caught in a terrible storm. Palimpsest explores these ideas with lush prose and haunting imagery. Cat Valente is definitely a singular talent at the top of her game.

I am a fan of Catherynne Valente's work - though I was initially put off by the description of this one, I ended up enjoying it.The premise is that there exists a city, Palimpsest, the can be visited only in one, complex way. A person must sleep with another person carrying a piece of the city map on his or her body - which first appears, like a bizarre STD "rash" after first coming into sexual contact with a carrier. For each new person an infected person sleeps with, they spend one night in Palimpsest. The city is so alluring - specifically enticing each infected person with what he or she wants most - that everyone wants like crazy to get back there and to stay there.Specifically the story is about a group of four people - November, Sei, Oleg and Ludovico, who first enter Palimpsest on the same night and how they try to figure out how to "emigrate" - live there permanently. Some reviews have said the story is hard to follow but I didn't find that to be true - it does hop back and forth between segments in the "real world" and segments in Palimpsest, but the overall arc of the segments does fit together.The good points of the book are the writing style - everyone says "dreamlike" etc - if you've read anything by Valente you will know whether or not it's your thing, and the way the themes of the two "worlds" fit together. Each of the characters is already isolated in the real world and can't connect with anyone there - but in Palimpsest they learn what it's like to connect with what they most wanted. The irony is that it is this desire that isolated them in the first place and that of course getting the thing has pluses and minuses.The downside, at least for the reader, is that this does not seem to register to the characters. Even though there are clearly creepy or painful aspects of getting what they want, each character continues on - in fact the ending comes almost too quickly and neatly. I wish there was more conflict inside the minds of the characters, and more of a sense that each has agency. The lack of this means the four are too similar to each other. Because the idea of the "quartet" is so important to the plot, the lack of differentiation or conflict within or between them significantly weakens the story.Also, oddly - and this could be a good or bad thing depending on one's taste - the sex is not especially sexy.

Palimpsest, by Catherine Valente, adds to the growing list of urban fantasy titles, books whose setting isn't mere background but plays a major role in the events themselves. To this relatively newly popular genre, Valente brings the same lushly poetic style and sense of myth and fairytale that characterized her duology (Orphan Tales, Night Garden), creating a more abstract and surrealistic version all her own. As well, rather than do a simple job of world-creating--the city is the world of the book--she also seems to be playing with a more traditional staple of fantasy--the other world some lucky few in our own get to enter, whether it be via a rabbit hole, a wardrobe, a magical book, or some other rare portal. The eponymous city, Palimpsest, is reached not through any of these randomly benevolent (or at least neutral) "doorways" but instead through sex; the doorway to Palimpsest is basically an STD. And like some STD's, it leaves its mark, in this case a map of a small portion of the city on the body (like a tattoo). Have sex w/ someone "infected" (someone who has been to Palimpsest), and during the sleep afterward you'll pass through to the city yourself, carried into that part of Palimpsest that appears on your partner's skin. You can only explore that section, however; to move beyond it you must find another "carrier," who will most likely be happy to run into you, as you now carry your own personal map somewhere on your body--a new place for them as well. Your first time in the city, you are "quartered"--you enter a sort of customs' house room with three other tourists who become connected to you before entering their appropriate section: you don't know them, they may be half-a-world away in our world, and you may never see them again here or there. But they play an important role, as they are the means of permanently emigrating to Palimpsest. The novel is multi-stranded via a seemingly omniscient narrator, one who can enter places usually off-limits. We follow all four of a quartet. Amaya Sei is a ticket-seller in Japan's rail system who has a love/obsession with trains and also must deal with the memories of her dead mother. November Aguilar is a beekeeper who lives near San Francisco, close to where her dead father is buried. Ludovico Conti lives in Rome with his wife Lucia, who helps him publish small-run, often specialized, books until she leaves him. The final member of the quartered group is Oleg Sadakov, a Russian immigrant locksmith in New York City who is haunted by his drowned sister. It doesn't take much to see the connection between them of loss and grief: Ludo for his wife, Oleg his dead sister, etc. All are lonely, unhappy individuals. It also doesn't take much to see them as the typical "small band" often found in these sorts of portal stories: the children of Edward Eager or C.S. Lewis or Madeline L'Engle. And several of the usual roles are played out here: the determined leader, the frightened one, the lost one, etc. As well, as is often the case, the group has some sort of action their newly-discovered land requires of them to be saved.But, as the sexual doorway clearly indicates, this is not a children's tale. And the "quest", the "saving of the land", is not the usual "drop a ring into a volcano," "defeat the Dark Lord, IT, the White Witch," or "villain to be named later." What it is, is slowly, tantalizing revealed and is nowhere near as simplistic or fantasy-mundane.The story moves back and forth between each character's story and their stories themselves are twinned--moving back and forth between their experiences in our world and in Palimpsest. As one would expect, the four characters and their stories eventually intertwine. Each character's story in Palimpsest opens up with our omniscient narrator introducing us to a new section of the city, almost as a guidebook does.And what is the city like? Strange. Beautiful. Dangerous. Enticing. Mundanely urban. Phantasmagoric. Bosch meets Gormenghast meets Narnia meets Prague. Trains are alive and wild (commuters have to literally "catch" them) and long to fly but bees are made in factories. Houses grow like a child and other house sometimes have to pack up and stroll away grumbling when one decides to expand. Inhabitants have shark heads, giraffe necks, cloven feet. Somewhere a cartographer "places her latest map on the windowsill like a fresh pie and slowly, as it cools, it opens along its own creases, its corners like wings, and takes halting flight . . . it has papery eyes, inky feathers, vellum claws." Elsewhere, "Zarzaparrilla Street is paved with old coats. Layer after layer of fine corduroy and felt and wool . . . and [people] must navigate with pole and gondola, ever so gently thrusting aside the sleeves and lapels and weedy ties, fluttering like seaweed, [carrying] great curving pairs of scissors in case of sudden disaster." Each neighborhood has a central character associated with it--the cartographer, a clothier, the abbess of the train station, etc.Everywhere it seems are wonders. But there are also the usual urban fare: shops and noise and transport and hoity-toity restaurants and schools for the upper class and a financial district and fountains, etc. And there are dangers--gangs and groups opposed to tourists or immigrants. And there are veterans, veterans of a war whose purpose and scale is only slowly revealed though it gradually becomes highly important.That's a lot of plot but it's such a complex novel (and the above doesn't do it full justice) that it's hard to discuss without some decently large explanation. So how does it succeed as a novel?It is, as mentioned, lushly, often densely poetic--an arch formal sort of style--rich in simile and metaphor and imagery. This is both blessing and curse I found. Blessing just for the sheer pleasure of so much of the language--Valente's poetry background shines through clearly and given free reign in terms of fantastical subject matter it sometimes takes your breath away. Curse because I though the story too uniformly such. Not only are the descriptive passages of Palimpsest the city so poetic, but so are the descriptions of the characters and our world and, more problematically in my view, so is the speech. The characters too often spoke like poets and while I could make an argument that only a certain sort find their way to Palimpsest, I really couldn't buy that. I wanted more differentiation in voice and style. This is more of a problem in the first half than the second, where we spend more time in Palimpsest itself and also where plot speeds up a bit to distract somewhat from style.I also though the sexual aspect came too easily to the characters. Or in those times it was presented as not all that easy, too quickly. Especially when the sex is other than what one of the characters would consider "normal." We're told at times that the decision to have sex to get back to the city is troublesome, but it never feels that way. Nor did I feel the addictive nature was quite fully nailed down. It relied a bit too much on the reader trusting that Valente's beautiful linguistic descriptions made it obvious why people would be so desperate to return, but that felt a bit too abstract and distant and too much a "built-in" reason rather than an organic one. The characters' need also feel "built-in"--lost as they are, unhappy as they are, the desire to emigrate to Palimpsest is almost a no-brainer--what are they giving up here after all? I would have liked to have seen a fuller view of such a choice, someone who would actually be faced with giving up a life of regular contentment or even happiness, someone with a family. And their inevitable coming together happened, when it did happen, all too quickly and easily. In general, the first half of the book--our introduction to the characters, this world's scenes, were less successful I thought than the second half, once we start spending more time in the city, start to unravel some of its mysteries, once the characters start to act and move. I don't want to say much about what happens in the latter half, though, because this more than most a cumulative book--it adds bit and pieces and grows on you and this feeling accelerates as you move past the halfway point. For that reason too, I won't say much about the ending save that some will be disappointed it ends too soon or abruptly. It isn't an ending that resolves itself anywhere near fully--not in the sense of leaving room for a sequel, but in the sense that the characters and the city itself are still growing, changing--we've seen only the beginning of a few choices and what the ripples of those choices will be is left for us to ponder ourselves; Valente isn't giving them up. For much of the first half, I confess to disappointment and thinking I'd not recommend the book--it was poetic but too uniformly so, neither characters nor plot were particularly compelling though the atmosphere was, and some parts felt a bit contrived. But past the halfway point the book began to win me over and more so as I went on, until by the end I was reading it ravenously (I put it down several times in its first half, only once in the second and that was because I had to). It didn't blow me away as did her previous two books, but in some ways it pulled me in deeper. And so highly recommended, with strong encouragement to, if you're struggling, try and reach that halfway point and see if it starts to also win you over.

Somewhere beyond sleep, a city wondrous and terrible waits for those who know the way there. Catherynne Valente's dream-fantasy is a brilliantly sensual and poetic tale that follows four strangers who arrive together in the mysterious city of Palimpsest on one night, their fates irrevocably intertwined.With descriptions that mix steampunk style with a heave dose of the surreal, Valente has created a fantasy realm that is wholly original even as it echoes familiar mythology.And her characters are as original and as vivid as her setting.The writing style is descriptive to the extreme. Some the images seem random, but for the most part, the prose is beautiful and effective at conveying a city that mixes the familiar with the utterly alien.The book follows four plotlines involving four separate lead characters and it takes a while before they get to the point of interacting with each other. This, combined with some of the rules for travel to Palimpsest that the author has established, result in the opening chapters having a redundant feel to them. However, the strong descriptions and engaging characters are more than enough to overcome these structural issues, and the book just keeps getting better as it builds momentum and the four plots become one.This story is definitely adult material, as sex functions as the mechanism for travel between dimensions and therefore is a constant element of the plot, although it's no more explicit than what would be found in many books in the romance category.Palimpsest is also a very powerful tale of addiction, loneliness, and the search for understanding in the world and beyond. Palimpsest is one of the most original works of literature I've read recently. It's a book with a ton of depth that does a great job of really evoking the dream-world that it so richly describes.

Complicated and magic, multilayered and multidimensional like Palimsest itself... read it if u like a plot that requires ur undivided attention, if u can handle rich imagery and symbolism in one run-on sentence and not get lost... on many occasions, some parts required multiple re-readings... but it is so beautiful and strange that its addictive... i loved it... and most likely will re-read again in its entirety... its that kinddah book where reading it once may not do...