Praise for Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Familiar
“The series at times recalls Ulysses, Infinite Jest, and Cloud Atlas in its complexity, structure, and echoing parallel narratives. . . . The literary world is stronger for having boundary pushers like Danielewski.” —Ryan Vlastelica, The A.V. Club
“So perfectly relatable, so beautifully rendered. . . . So, so worth it in the way that reading [The Familiar] rewires your brain.” —Jason Sheehan, NPR Books
“Graphic design works in tandem with storytelling in this fascinating, ongoing, humongous experiment with form and the experience of reading.” —John Freeman, The Boston Globe
“[The Familiar] is a ‘remediation’ of television series like Twin Peaks and Breaking Bad . . . resembles Altman-inflected movies . . . or the time and place-skipping novels of David Mitchell. . . . I’m definitely in.” —Tom LeClair, The New York Times Book Review
“Danielewski has somehow created a format, an experience, that mimics the best of the digital future we’ve been told to expect, while exploiting the best of print, that which we’ve been told to mourn. . . . The Familiar is a tour de force.” —Allison K. Hill, Los Angeles Daily News
“[Danielewski is] the most aggressively avant-garde popular writer working today. . . . The Familiar is as much a narrative story as it is an experiment in visual and typographical forms. . . . It all adds up to something between a graphic novel and a novel-novel.” —Cady Drell, Newsweek
“The author is innovating wildly not only with text but also with narrative flow, structure, and multiplicity of meaning. Loose, imagistic words are followed by tightly layered prose and pictures; this varied density creates a deeply nuanced reading experience that works. A must-read.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“A marvel of postmodern storytelling.” —Kirkus Reviews
“This is a book you cannot miss—because there’s simply nothing else like it.” —Jefferson Grubbs, Bustle
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