The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May

NATIONAL BEST SELLER  The Familiar Volume 1 Wherein the cat is found . . . From the author of the internationalbest seller House of Leaves and National Book Award–nominated Only Revolutions comes a monumental new novel as dazzling as it is riveting. The Familiar (Volume 1) ranges from Mexico to Southeast Asia, from Venice, Italy, to Venice, California, with nine lives hanging in the balance, each called upon to make a terrifying choice. They include a therapist-in-training grappling with daughters as demanding as her patients; an ambitious East L.A. gang member contracted for violence; two scientists in Marfa, Texas, on the run from an organization powerful beyond imagining; plus a recovering addict in Singapore summoned at midnight by a desperate billionaire; and a programmer near Silicon Beach whose game engine might unleash consequences far exceeding the entertainment he intends. At the very heart, though, is a twelve-year-old girl named Xanther who one rainy day in May sets out with her father to get a dog, only to end up trying to save a creature as fragile as it is dangerous . . . which will change not only her life and the lives of those she has yet to encounter, but this world, too—or at least the world we think we know and the future we take for granted.(With full-color illustrations throughout.) THE FAMILIAR continues... The Familiar Volume 2Wherein the cat is hungry . . . The Familiar Volume 3 Wherein the cat is blind . . . The Familiar Volume 4 Wherein the cat is toothless . . . The Familiar Volume 5Wherein the cat is named . . .

Laura Collins-Hughes, The Boston Globe

“Thrilling and magnetic. . . . . The Familiar: Volume One is a boldly original, gorgeous, and suspenseful work of literature. . . . Thoroughly encoded with the language of our design-conscious, cinema-saturated, tech-centric era. We’re fluent in it because we’re living now.”

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“A new novel by Danielewski requires a new way of reading. . . . Reading [The Familiar] . . .  as one approaches the pilot to a new TV series, Volume 1 becomes a revelation, a thrilling, compulsive reading experience. . . . A tour de force, less a novel than it is an experience. . . . The next volume

Allison K. Hill, Los Angeles Daily News

“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 reader is called upon to commit, to actively participate and engage in the unconventional structure and its relationship to the sprawling, eight-plot narrative, but also to enjoy: as serious as this all may seem, Volume 1 has a playfulness, a mischievousness, not unlike a cat."

Andrew Munz, Planet Jackson Hole (Wyoming)

“As our society gets more technology-weary, it’s nice to see books like The Familiar: Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May break the mold and tell a story in a new and innovate way exclusive to physical pages between two covers.”

Tom LeClair, The New York Times Book Review

“[Danielewski is] America’s foremost literary Magus. . . . He transmutes the pages of base books into rare new forms and formats. . . . [The Familiar: Volume 1] is a ‘remediation’ of television series like Twin Peaks and Breaking Bad . . . [and also] resembles Altman-inflected movies . . . or the time and place-skipping novels of David Mitchell. . . . I’m definitely in for Volume 2.”

S. Tremaine Nelson, Green Mountains Review

“Excellent. . . . It reminds you of the novel’s unknowable potential. Danielewski does this better than anybody. It’s like he crinkles up a page with words and then straightens it out and pastes it into the book, so that only the most important words remain legible, while teasing you to try to figure out the blurry, scarred sentences hiding in the margins. . . . I love Xanther, love her, and I can’t stand the thought of something bad happening to her, and, yes, I’ll keep reading this series as long as her story continues.”

Zach Borenstein, Everyday eBook

“A herculean achievement. . . . The wild visuals render beautifully on an e-reader, but suggest that the medium of physical books is not entirely replaceable. This book may even have a chance to become this age's equivalent to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Danielewski's certainly not aiming any lower.”

Cady Drell, Newsweek

“[Danielewski is] the most aggressively avant-garde popular writer working today. . . . The Familiar: Volume 1 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.”

because there’s simply nothing else like it.”

“I found it helpful to think of The Familiar as less of a ‘book’ in the traditional sense of the word, and more as a piece of experimental visual art. . . . If you’re a House of Leaves fan like me, then this is a book you cannot miss

Jonathan Russell Clark, LitHub.com

“The Familiar [is] Danielewski’s most ambitious narrative undertaking yet, which is saying a lot. . . . More than any other contemporary writer, Danielewski has blown the door wide open on novelistic experimentation. . . . [He] has shown, emphatically, just how much formal experimentation can truly enhance a narrative experience. . . . His books are freewheeling adventures into intricate depths and wide expanses, and they’ve helped usher in a new era of the novel.”

Lydia Millet, Los Angeles Times

“The Familiar is performance art as well as book. . . . The Familiar will be a delight to fans of House of Leaves . . . This, like all of Danielewski’s work, is a verbal structure made for puzzle solvers.”

Los Angeles Magazine

“Incontestably the shortest 880-page novel you’ll ever read. . . . It flies by with the breakneck surrealism of lived experience.”

The Huffington Post,

“The House of Leaves author is back with yet another text-art riddled story. The story begins ‘one rainy day in May,’ when a 12-year-old named Xanther is hesitantly studying up on math while riding in the car with her dad. . . . Xanther's story is the nexus for a score of others, and the author's fragmented means of storytelling proves as fresh and compelling as ever.”

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Most everything about this vast, elusive, sometimes even illusory narrative shouts tour de force.”

Library Journal (starred review)

“This novel goes beyond the experimental into the visionary, creating a language and style that expands the horizon of meaning . . . [and] hints at an evolved form of literature.”

About the Author

MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI was born in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles.

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