Palimpsest
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Product Description
Product Description
In the Cities of Coin and Spice and In the Night Garden introduced readers to the unique and intoxicating imagination of Catherynne M. Valente. Now she weaves a lyrically erotic spell of a place where the grotesque and the beautiful reside and the passport to our most secret fantasies begins with a stranger’s kiss.…
Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse—a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers: Oleg, a New York locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They’ve each lost something important—a wife, a lover, a sister, a direction in life—and what they will find in Palimpsest is more than they could ever imagine.
Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse—a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers: Oleg, a New York locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They’ve each lost something important—a wife, a lover, a sister, a direction in life—and what they will find in Palimpsest is more than they could ever imagine.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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".
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".
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
whimsical nonsense
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... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Fluxian
The things we must give up
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... Read more
Published on 10 April 2010 by Ian
An acquired taste, perhaps
'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... Read more
Published on 13 May 2009 by avidreader
amazing book!
Wow! I've loved all Ms Valente's and have been waiting with increasing impatience for the release of Palimpsest.
It does not disappoint! Read more
It does not disappoint! Read more
Published on 24 Feb 2009 by Raven
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