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A family of three: father, mother, son.
A house that gives them shelter but shapes their nightmares.
An illness that nearly arrested the past, and looms over the future.
A second family—a copy family. Mirror bodies.
Events on the horizon: a hole, a box, a light, a girl.
Holes in houses. Holes in speaking. Holes in flesh.
Memories that deceive and figures that tempt and lure and withdraw.
There Is No Year is the astonishing new novel by Blake Butler.
It is a world of scare, a portrait of return, a fable of survival and the fierce burden of art.
A family lives in a house in which strange things start to happen (or—it's a new novel by Blake Butler).
Love him, hate him or feign indifference: There's really no other way to react to the work of writer/postmodernist/multi-hyphenate Butler (Ever, 2009, etc). For those who like their prose fresh out of a cleaner and more traditional wellspring, Blake's writing can prove tedious at best and arduous at worst. But for those who lean toward writing that is more visceral, taxing or outright demanding of the reader, this might be the right cup of tea—see Mark Z. Danielewski'sHouse of Leaves(2000),to which this novelowes some debt. The book concerns a family of doppelgängers so featureless that Butler doesn't bother to give them names (or more accurately, likely purposefully washes them out to their elementary characteristics). So, the father, the mother and the son live in a house, just like the carbon copy father, mother and son had done before them. The father stares at a computer screen. The mother stares at her lined face in mirrors and thinks protective thoughts about her son, who suffers from a disease that nearly ended his life. The son goes to school, makes a friend and watches television with his family. It's all presented in hushed, monochrome language that gives the whole enterprise a sense of menace from the beginning, even before Butler introduces the father's paranoia that things in the house are changing without his knowledge. And then things do start changing.
A gruesome slice of familial oddity that demonstrates its author's versatility.
Anonymous
Posted June 6, 2013
Blake Butler. What can I say about Mr. Butler ? For one, this book is amazing. It's a terrifying, traumatizing nightmare. But it's also a wonderful dream. I won't lie, this book is not for the light reader. Though it's fairly short, Butler's sentences twist & wind in such a way that make it damn near impossible to decipher. But that's the beauty of them. Butler's writing appears to be that of a psychotic. It's a haunting novel, for sure. One that will be deeply imprinted in your mind long after you put it down. But if it's too complex for you, then it is my greatest pleasure to inform you that you are too boring to read There Is No Year in the first place.
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Posted March 27, 2012
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Overview
A family of three: father, mother, son.
A house that gives them shelter but shapes their nightmares.
An illness that nearly arrested the past, and looms over the future.
A second family—a copy family. Mirror bodies.
Events on the horizon:...