The Labyrinth by Catherynne M. Valente (2004)

I finished the labyrinth a couple of days ago and I'm still thinking about it, which is a good sign. This is certainly not a book that you can just read through, or even read more than 2 or 3 chapers in a row., and so despite being a short novel, it took me toe same time as it would to read a book twice it's size. plot? basicaly the unnamed narrator is trying to escape the doors and meets various creatures along the way;chess pieces who can't play chess, etc. She cannot remember ever not being in the labyrinth and she is slowly descending into madness.
Overall, I enjoyed the Labyrinth and I'm glad I read it, though I love the Orphan's Tales books a lot more. I'm definitely going to look out for more of valente's work. ( )

Labyrinth is like a lace-work of words. It's definitely surreal, and there are explosions of paragraphs that describe nothing so much as madness. It a story of a quest that isn't, a journey to a center that's not there. It's slightly insane and cyclical, but it's beautifully wrought. The plot is certainly secondary to the tale-telling, and the times that the book drops out of the narrator's head and dips into dialogue serve as resting points for your sensory-overloaded brain. At times, it can be a little bit hard to slog through the metaphors and find the meaning behind it, but it's rewarding in the end. ( )

Hmm. This is a tricky one.

My first thought on reading through the opening pages of this book was "ah, I see - somebody read Vellum and thought 'Duncan has some nice ideas, but it's a shame he's so fixated on cramming his books with the myriad details of his obsessively linear plot; he could have tried to develop some sort of literary style instead'". While that isn't, to be honest, a very fair assessment of The Labyrinth, it is, I think, a good indication of who shouldn't be reading this book - the chances seem pretty good that if you don't care for Duncan (or, for that matter, Harrison or K.J.Bishop or VanderMeer or any similar writers) this isn't the book for you.

On her website Valente observes that "people seem a little accusatory when they tell me that it's 'not fiction, really, it's prose-poetry,' as though I somehow tricked them into reading poetry and must now be shot.'". And indeed, anybody saying that would, I think, be going a little far: while the language is certainly lyrical, this is clearly a novel, not a poem: there are characters, dialogue, and yes, even glimmerings of a plot.

However, this certainly isn't an easy book to read. For a start, the prose - while frequently gorgeous - is just as frequently obtuse, and occasionally borders on ludicrous. The central, unnamed protagonist of the book is not exactly in full possession of her mental faculties, and while the text does a good job (most of the time) of her capturing her worldview, it would be hard to say that this made for a pleasant reading experience. I also had some reservations with elements of the plot - in particular, while the ending probably wasn't meant to be a 'twist' in the usual sense of the word, the fact I could guess what it was likely to be only a couple of chapters into the book was a slight disappointment. And perhaps the plot itself could have been developed a little more deeply; while Valente's essentially riffing on fairy tales here, I'd argue that a novel of this length requires a little more meat to it - the language by itself isn't quite up to justifying the book's size.

But this is a clever book, and one I'm glad to have read. For a first novel especially, it's an impressive effort, if oddly lacking in any real emotional punch. I'd be intrigued to see what Valente is capable of when working with a more traditional narrative, so I'll almost certainly be taking a look at her Orphan's Tales books later this year.

While the language is rich and poetic, I wouldn’t recommend this particular title to just any fantasy reader. Instead, I’d recommend it to any reader who has a love of poetic language, a love of metaphor. It’s hardly a fantasy so much as it is a myth, a fairy-tale (which is a fantasy in some regards, but not traditional). The chapters are short and grouped together in Cantos (see? Big!Long!Prose!Poem!). This is something I’d recommend to lovers of myth and fairytale, philosophy and metaphor, and most important, lovers of language. You can’t help but feel a little smarter, more enlightened, after reading this.

I definitely plan on reading more of Valente’s work, particularly her latest release. It’ll be interesting to compare her other books to this, especially the style and use of language. And I’d really love to hear her read The Labyrinth out loud. As with anything poetic, one feels as though they’re missing something while reading it silently. This book demands to be heard.

And an aside: this book also begs to be a painted narrative by someone as surreal and talented as Dave McKean. Everything from the Labyrinth itself to the chameleon colors of the narrator…I’d love to see what an artist like him could do with this book.

For a full review, which may or may not include spoilers, please click here: http://calico-reaction.livejournal.co... ( )