Mark Danielewski (House of Leaves, recommended here recently) has a new book, Only Revolutions, which the Oregonian calls "a palindrome of a book." Fans of Idees Fortes in the first year of Wired Magazine may be inclined to check this out. (Remember Mind Grenades?) The new book has earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus; see below.

This week, the New Yorker briefly notes the book release:

In his new novel, Danielewski is up to his old tricks -- multicolored and upside-down text -- and some flabbergasting new ones, including a double-ended structure that obliges the reader to flip the book every eight pages. (Two place-holding ribbons are provided.) The plot involves a pair of teen-agers, Sam and Hailey, who narrate alternating accounts of a freewheeling adventure through America.

Earlier this month, the LA Times profiled Danielewski:

Whereas "House of Leaves" was a fantastical Borges-via-M.C. Escher riff on everything from cutting-edge literary theory to the rhythms of L.A. nightlife and failing marriages, at heart the new novel is quite a traditional American tale — boy meets girl, they fall desperately in love, they hit the highway. Granted, "Revolutions' " 16-year-old heroes, Sam and Hailey, time-travel through 50 years of world history, conjure automobiles from thin air and wisecrack with a century's worth of obscure teenage slang.

In Psychedelic Love, they also reviewed the new book earlier this month, calling it "a dizzying, psychedelic he said-she said." The review wraps up:

"Only Revolutions" will likely infuriate traditionalists, who (like one friend of mine) might well call it "ejaculations of ink on paper." But it's also a quintessential novel of our time, embodying, as it does, art / technology / literature / design and the spirit of experimentation.

Whether or not you go for this kind of thing, "Only Revolutions" should be paid attention to, if only because of how it embraces and utilizes new technology and how, in turn, that technology has shaped it.

Amazon has this to say:

Mark Danielewski's first novel Ho... [ Read More (0.6k in body) ]