Mathematically gorgeous, but best read like a coffee table book (flipping through sections and reading piecemeal over the course of an hour). ( )

I finished this a while back, but I am just getting back into updating the page here. What can I say about Mark Danielewski that will do him or his writing justice? This book runs a whole new course away from his previous opus, "House of Leaves", but still he does it with a sense of composition and style that I hadn't seen before. It can take a little bit to get into it and find the rythym of the words, but once you settle into that lyrical flow it will sweep you through years and generations of history, spanning the revolutions of the ages in years and in fears. I highly recommend it. Truly. ( )

This novelty comes advertised as a novel, which it is not. To me, it more closely resembles output from a poetry slam featuring Allen Ginsburg, Walt Whitman, and James Joyce, moderated by Bob Dylan, and then published as a long poem in a language which vaguely resembles English at times. The book is presented sequentially in two narratives, each narrated by one character; after completing one, you flip the book over and read the other one--forget the publisher's crazy suggestion on how to read it. Running parallel to the poem is a chronology, also somehow poetic, of world history from the middle of the nineteenth century until the dawn of this one. Some of the dates are misplaced, which I imagine has some kind of significance which was lost on me. Yet another complication is that if one reads the first narrative first, the chronology begins almost all the way through, leaving you to start back during the American Civil War with the second narrative. Had this been a shorter book, I might have finished it--it's slightly more interesting than it sounds--but put the two books together and you're talking about well over 700 pages and a time commitment of months. The book is also quite ribald, and so may not be a good choice for those easily offended, if such individuals exist any more. ( )

not good ( )

A tough read for someone who doesn't like poetry, but great. Take away the structure crap and it's still beautiful. ( )