The Familiar, Volume 3: Honeysuckle & Pain

The Familiar Volume 1 Wherein the cat is found . . . The Familiar Volume 2 Wherein the cat is hungry . . .The Familiar Volume 3 Wherein the cat is blind . . .Released for the summer from the perils of school, Xanther and her nameless cat are settling into a comfortable routine at home. However, the rest of the Ibrahim family is growing more and more unsettled. Astair fears their stretched finances are already at a breaking point. Not even a visit from an old friend can mitigate Anwar’s feeling that he’s failing to support those he loves and that even worse things are to come. The twins, Freya and Shasti, sense something too and blame their older sister. Honeysuckles haunt the air and smell of offerings . . . Meanwhile, Cas and Bobby’s survival may depend on facing the one person they fear most. And on the other side of the world, Jingjing and Tian Li set out to find what was lost: their missing cat. With spectacular visuals and the vibrant wordplay that are his trademark, The Familiar (Volume 3) is a beautiful and singular reading experience that could come only from the imagination of Mark Z. Danielewski.THE FAMILIAR  continuesThe Familiar Volume 4 Wherein the cat is toothless . . . The Familiar Volume 5 Wherein the cat is named . . .

Ryan Vlastelica, The A.V. Club

“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.”

Jason Sheehan, NPR Books

“So perfectly relatable, so beautifully rendered. . . . So, so worth it in the way that reading [The Familiar] rewires your brain.”

John Freeman, The Boston Globe

“Graphic design works in tandem with storytelling in this fascinating, ongoing, humongous experiment with form and the experience of reading.”

Tom LeClair, The New York Times Book Review

“[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.”

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 Familiar is a tour de force.”

Cady Drell, Newsweek

“[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.”

Library Journal (starred review)

“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.”

Kirkus Reviews

“A marvel of postmodern storytelling.”

because there’s simply nothing else like it.”

“This is a book you cannot miss

About the Author

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

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