Is anyone reading "The Familiar?" (Hide spoilers)

[Sarpedon]

I just got finished with volume 2, and am resisting the urge to go out and buy volume 3 right away. I gotta pace myself, as only 3 have been released.

Is anyone else joining me on this insane literary adventure?

I wish I had someone to talk to about it. My best friend hasn't read it, my girlfriend was confused and affronted by it, and then left me (purportedly for unrelated reasons). My other friends aren't into this sort of thing. Is there anyone here who would like to talk about it? Join me in saying, WTF? Sharing the love for the animal vignette chapters at the end that may or may not have fuck all to do with the main narrative, whatever it is?

 

[PyramidHead]

I couldn't get through volume 2, honestly. I loved his previous work, House of Leaves, and thought Only Revolutions was just okay. But reading this new one felt laborious to me, and I couldn't be bothered after a while. It became a chore just trying to figure out basic things like: who is speaking, where are the characters physically in relation to one another, is this a flashback/dream/vision or is it actually happening, etc. because the writing style is so stylized that it comes off as hostile to the reader. I'd love to delve into the deeper mysteries of what's going on with the Orbs and stuff, but I found myself spending most of my time just banging my head against the wall keeping track of everything. I guess I lack the patience to really immerse myself in that kind of narrative; I have a similar problem with movies like Babel, with separate unrelated things all happening simultaneously. I wish you luck and enjoyment--maybe I'll pick it up again if I hear it's starting to get really good.

 

[Sarpedon]

Alright, I'll tell you what I think of volume 3, when I get to it. Personally, I thought the end of volume 2 was very interesting. While it is certainly a difficult read, I do tend to find each chapter to be well written and contained, so I never got tired of reading them (with the exception of the jingjing chapters, mainly because of his impenetrable dialect).

 

[PyramidHead]

Alright, I'll tell you what I think of volume 3, when I get to it. Personally, I thought the end of volume 2 was very interesting. While it is certainly a difficult read, I do tend to find each chapter to be well written and contained, so I never got tired of reading them (with the exception of the jingjing chapters, mainly because of his impenetrable dialect).

Yes, jingjing's and Luther's were what frustrated me the most. I really liked the Cas and Bobby sections, which seemed to directly deal with the mystery at the heart of the plot (VEM, the "distribution"). The chapters are indeed self-contained, to the point where some of them don't seem like they add much of anything (Isandorno, Shnork, Ozgur). Maybe I'll finish up volume 2 to see if it sparks my interest again.

 

[Sarpedon]

Shnork is a favorite of mine. He seems to have fuck-all to do with anyone else, but he's an interesting character on his own.

Isandorno, Luther, and jingjing all seem to be linked via the drugs plot, while Xanther and family are linked to Cas, and

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I think jingjing's aunt's missing cat is also Xanther's cat, somehow

. Ozgur is also linked to the drug plot, by virtue of being a police detective. Shnork just seems to be floating.

 

[tantric]

I couldn't get through volume 2, honestly. I loved his previous work, House of Leaves, and thought Only Revolutions was just okay. But reading this new one felt laborious to me, and I couldn't be bothered after a while. It became a chore just trying to figure out basic things like: who is speaking, where are the characters physically in relation to one another, is this a flashback/dream/vision or is it actually happening, etc. because the writing style is so stylized that it comes off as hostile to the reader. I'd love to delve into the deeper mysteries of what's going on with the Orbs and stuff, but I found myself spending most of my time just banging my head against the wall keeping track of everything. I guess I lack the patience to really immerse myself in that kind of narrative; I have a similar problem with movies like Babel, with separate unrelated things all happening simultaneously. I wish you luck and enjoyment--maybe I'll pick it up again if I hear it's starting to get really good.

wait, whatshisname wrote another book?!?! hmmm. house of leaves was monumental, but there can never be anything like it.

 

[PyramidHead]

I couldn't get through volume 2, honestly. I loved his previous work, House of Leaves, and thought Only Revolutions was just okay. But reading this new one felt laborious to me, and I couldn't be bothered after a while. It became a chore just trying to figure out basic things like: who is speaking, where are the characters physically in relation to one another, is this a flashback/dream/vision or is it actually happening, etc. because the writing style is so stylized that it comes off as hostile to the reader. I'd love to delve into the deeper mysteries of what's going on with the Orbs and stuff, but I found myself spending most of my time just banging my head against the wall keeping track of everything. I guess I lack the patience to really immerse myself in that kind of narrative; I have a similar problem with movies like Babel, with separate unrelated things all happening simultaneously. I wish you luck and enjoyment--maybe I'll pick it up again if I hear it's starting to get really good.

wait, whatshisname wrote another book?!?! hmmm. house of leaves was monumental, but there can never be anything like it.

It's true. House of Leaves had a perfect balance of mystery and drama, where the hidden parts were lurking in the subtext and the action was pretty straightforward (unless the character was clearly hallucinating or something). I find that The Familiar would have been better told in the same way, with some kind of straightforward narrative at the core, with the embellishments and secrets added around it. Instead, I felt like the biggest secret was the narrative itself. As a reader, I like to be fairly secure about WHAT is happening, and to speculate about why, how, and what it all means. The Familiar gets an exception in some ways because it wanders into meta-narrative and deconstruction, but House of Leaves did that too and I still understood who was doing what.

 

[Sarpedon]

I took my sweet time, but now I'm done with volume three. I'm still giving the series a high rating.

The narratives are starting to come together, as Mephisto visits Anwar, Xanther and so forth, thus officially linking the Cas narrative to the main one, while Anwar and Xanther also randomly bump into Luther at a car show, bringing him into the fold. Ozgur, Jingjing and Schnork continue to be odd men out.

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Xanther's bizarre magical door opening powers continue to develop, while the eye-stones take kind of a back seat.

In other news, the narrative constructs begin to actually talk to each other.

Also, the wtf postscript sad animal story tradition continues with another heartbreaking tale of an animal dying a horrible death, this time a baby polar bear first separated from its mother by a storm and then being devoured by an orca. Note I don't consider this a spoiler, because these animal tales seem to have little connection to the rest of the story (though probably wrong about that) and they all seem to end with the brutal deaths of their main character, so that's not a spoiler either. C'mon Mark, what are you doing this to us for?

 

[Sarpedon]

Volume 4 coming out tomorrow! Anyone still with me?