Review: Palimpsest, by Catherynne M. Valente

[ed_rex]

The wound of the 'sexually-transmitted city'

In a recent blog entry Catherynne M. Valente offered a sardonic reply to reviewers who have used phrases like "not for everyone" and "dense" to describe her work.

"'Not for everyone' is certainly one--dude, no book is for everyone, why does this need to be said, even the most popular books have entire cultures of hate around them, if books were either black or white, for everyone or no one, then there'd be five books published a year and that would be it. No one would have to write reviews."

Having now read the Hugo Award-nominated Palimpsest, I find it hard not to echo the phrase, "not for everyone".

Palimpsest is far from your average genre novel, and a reader seeking from it the comforts of the familiar is likely going to wander away confused and disappointed. Palimpsest does not boast a standard plot or setting and features no obvious hero or villain. And then there's the language ...

Worse then the lazy descriptions of her work as "dense" and "not for everyone", says Valente, "is the oft-repeated saw" that she writes "more poetry than prose".

Valente's second objection is simply correct. Her prose is complicated and artful, loaded with imagery and metaphor, but it is not poetry, stealth or otherwise. It is presumably sometimes mistaken for poetry because Valente dares to dance from present tense to past, from second person to third (and back again). She is a writer willing to play with language, to push and pull it into new and interesting shapes — almost always, I am happy to say, while keeping in mind that she is first of all telling a story — however (ahem) difficult or even "dense".

None of which make of a piece of writing, poetry, any more than inclusion of parts for viola and bassoon of necessity make of a piece of music, a symphony.

All that said, is Palimpsest a good novel?

On first-reading, yes it is. Very much so.

Click here to catch a glimpse of the 'sexually-transmitted city' (no significant spoilers).

Comments

[feuervogel]

I hated that book. I didn't like any of the characters, Palimpsest sounds like a horrible place, and, while Valente didn't reach Jacqueline Carey levels of over-writing, her prose was too convoluted, and there were words used wrongly, which threw me out of the book. Which made me sad, because I liked the idea behind the book.

I've come to realize that I'm in a very tiny minority where this book is concerned, at least on the internet.

[eagle]

The characters were rather hard to like. I had that problem too. Sei and November salvaged that a little bit, but even with them I liked them better at the start of the book and less and less as it went on.

The imagery was beautiful, but it was also aggressively nasty in a way that bothered me at times.

There are some bits of writing in there that, for me, just shone, but then I also like Jacqueline Carey. :) But it's a book that I'd only recommend with substantial caveats.

[feuervogel]

I think it's the nastiness that did it in for me, too. The sympathetic characters were just horrible, unsympathetic people. The only character I remotely liked was Sei, and as you say, she got less likeable as the book progressed.

There was some really good writing in there, but there's a line between vivid descriptions and purple prose, and imo, she crossed it.

Ah! *There's* the second Carey reference!

[ed_rex]

I'm with you in terms of (there's that concept again!) being particularly selective about whom I would recommend Valente too.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people to whom I wouldn't recommend Doctor Who, either, if for very different reasons.

Any relation to Peter?

[ed_rex]

Yours is the second comment about Jacqueline Carey I've seen in relation to Valente — and the second mention of the former I've seen anywhere, ever. I guess I'd better hie myself off to Google.

Meanwhile, I found Valente's prose to be complex, but not convoluted and (as I've said) I thought the book was very well-written.

Our mileage clearly varies on the question.

Re: Any relation to Peter?

[feuervogel]

I don't think I'm related to any Peters, no...

Carey writes the Kushiel series, and her prose style runs toward the extremely purple. I made it through the first book, because people promised me it got better, but I mostly just wanted to kill the main character. Repeatedly.

I wanted to like palimpsest, but I couldn't connect with the characters, the writing style, or the supposed wonders of the city. If I hate your main characters, your storytelling skill has got to be amazing to keep me involved.

I was curious enough to find out what happened to read to the end (I was on vacation), but it didn't compel me to either read more of her work or to recommend it to people.

Re: Any relation to Peter?

[ed_rex]

I don't think I'm related to any Peters, no...

Sorry, I meant the Australian writer Peter Carey — mostly my idea of a joke.

Anyway, liking a book's characters isn't essential to my enjoyment, but I won't pretend that it doesn't help.

Re: Any relation to Peter?

[feuervogel]

Ha, I totally missed the reference...

I saw in your full review that you thought the characters weren't very real, and that the setting was a more important character in its own right. I can agree with that. That may have been part of my inability to connect to them: aside from not being likeable, they were ciphers.

[shanaqui]

I get irritated by the insistence on division of poetry and prose, sometimes. I'm a microfiction writer: all of my work is arguably flirting with the boundaries. If Cat Valente's work was microfiction like I do, I think the same could be said of her. That's not a good or bad thing, objectively, just a matter of taste.

Fuzzy boundaries don't mean *no* boundaries!

[ed_rex]

I don't like putting words in other peoples' mouths, but I think Valente's distinction is valid. Like the border between SF and fantasy, one can argue cases but I don't think there are many who would argue there's no different between prose and poetry at all.

Re: Fuzzy boundaries don't mean *no* boundaries!

[shanaqui]

When it comes to microfiction, in my experience, you're wrong. Most people I know who read or write microfiction believe that poetry, prose-poetry and microfiction are interchangeable terms.

I don't see what length changes about that: prose that pays attention to rhythm and sound, and uses poetic devices, etc, is poetry to me, in a sense. And I don't get why that bothers Cat Valente -- which from your selective quoting it seems it does? -- given that poetry is equally as valid as prose.

Re: Fuzzy boundaries don't mean *no* boundaries!

[ed_rex]

Well, the key phrase here is "in a sense". If you read Valente's full piece (I linked to it in my first sentence), you'll see that she believes that she writes both prose and poetry, that the two art-forms are very different beasts, and that critics who claim her prose is poetry are confusing careful use of language in prose with something else entirely (poetry).

But I suppose you ought to take it up with her if you think she's talking out of her hat.

Re: Fuzzy boundaries don't mean *no* boundaries!

[shanaqui]

*shrugs* I don't feel a particular need to get argumentative about it, but it sounds like I do disagree with her. The boundary between the language of poetry and prose is artificial, to me.

There is a more obvious difference between poetry and prose in terms of form, but I'm not convinced you should divide the two based on that. Pieces of microfiction are often included in books of poetry based on the language, ignoring the difference in form: I feel that's the correct decision.

Re: Fuzzy boundaries don't mean *no* boundaries!

[ed_rex]

All right, but you keep talking about microfiction when both I (and Valente) are talking about novels, so I'm going to bow out of this.

Re: Fuzzy boundaries don't mean *no* boundaries!

[shanaqui]

Novels aren't going to be included in anthologies of poetry, because of their length if nothing else, so I couldn't precisely use that as an example. I thought I'd fairly explicitly stated I don't believe there's always a difference between poetry and prose, regardless of the length of the poetry or prose: I was talking about language in novels, too.

It's fair enough if you don't want to discuss your/the assumption that poetry and prose are two different beasts, just say so.

Re: Fuzzy boundaries don't mean *no* boundaries!

[ed_rex]

I don't know much about poetry, but that kind of argument doesn't much interest me when it comes to things I do know about (eg, the line between fantasy and science fiction), so getting into an argument about the difference between "poetry" (with which my experience is limited) and "microfiction" (with which my experience is very nearly zero) seems quite pointless from my vantage-point.

Besides which, I'd prefer to discuss the book at hand.

Re: Fuzzy boundaries don't mean *no* boundaries!

[shanaqui]

Fair enough. You seemed pretty certain about it, in your post, so I thought it might be interesting to discuss with you, but never mind: it is pointless if you're not interested and don't actually have much experience with what you're talking about.