One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide by Christian Kiefer: Review

One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide by Christian Kiefer
Publisher: Nouvella. March 22, 2016.
Pages: 193
Genre: Literary fiction
Source: Publisher



ADD TO GOODREADS

BUY FROM NOUVELLA

BUY FROM BOOK DEPOSITORY

Renowned installation artist Frank Poole has embarked on his most ambitious project to date: an entire housing subdivision in the desert of Nevada, with every element painted stark white. By his side is his young wife Caitlin, his manager and confidante who keeps the volatile artist functioning from day to day. But as Frank grows increasingly anxious about his undertaking, Caitlin learns she is pregnant and begins to wonder what the future might hold for them both. -Goodreads

Let us be clear.
The time you spend reading these words
will not be returned.

Can we give a shout out to the best opening lines ever written? Luckily, the rest of this novella is about as bold as those first two sentences that confront you before the story begins. I was at first startled by the format of this delightfully sized little book, but soon came to fall in love with it. The whole thing is like a transcript of a documentary. Sort of. It's a transcript of a documentary, and yet it doesn't feel dry. It's lyrical, though sparsely written. Kiefer's writing first impressed me in The Animals and it didn't fail to impress me here. Every once in a while, the book references you as the viewer, or one of the characters looks at you/the camera. I wholly felt as if I were watching humans the entire time, so this experimental format was a success.

The story was at once intriguing. An artist, Frank Poole, who creates huge installations (like a replica of a Starbucks in a strip mall that is forever locked) begins work on his largest-scale project yet. In this project, he attempts to capture perfect moments in time through creating an entire,  completely and perpetually sealed off neighborhood in the middle of the desert; all painted white.

As his project gets more difficult and unwieldy, we learn more about Frank and his dysfunctional childhood through interview. We also learn more about his young wife and manager, Caitlin, who gave up her own artistic dreams and is now pregnant. The experimental format and Kiefer's beautiful writing lend to some really visual scenes that show us important things about their relationship and Frank's worsening struggle with his project and life.

The novella is chock-full of poignant vignettes and bits of dialogue, but I'm still unsure about the ending. I actually ended up rereading most of the book to see if I was missing something. I liked it, but it felt a little too easy. I would love to hear what anybody else thought of it.

Overall, this is a good pick for the Weirdathon if you're looking for an experimental format. It's easily a book you can finish in one sitting. 

P. S. The book cover is beautiful and you can only see the title at very specific angles, making it frustrating to photograph, but a delight to hold and look at.

10 Fantastic Nonlinear Novels

I'm pretty well known for loving experimental formats. But I don't need a book to be THAT crazy all the time! Sometimes all I need is some interesting, nonlinear formatting. When a narrative isn't told strictly chronologically, it offers a lot of opportunity for tension building and more richly layered understanding of the story. Books that play with how stories are told are golden in my book, and here are ten really good ones that you should check out immediately. And, surprise! They're all great picks for #weirdathon!

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

ADD TO GOODREADS

This is one of my favorite books and I do not talk about it enough. It's fascinating both in format and story. This one is told BACKWARDS chronologically. It all leads back to a horrible incident that disfigured main character, Sean. Sean created a mail-in role playing game that got taken too far. This book is absolutely stunning.

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

ADD TO GOODREADS

House of Leaves is an experimental go-to and it's pretty brilliant. This literary horror novel is a book within a book about a documentary that doesn't exist in our reality or the novel's. It jumps around between the narrator's present, the narrator's past, and the manuscript that he found. Often all within one page. A frightening and labyrinthian read.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

ADD TO GOODREADS

Just a heads up, this is probably my favorite book of all time. And this one is pretty straight forward in its non-linearity. It jumps between albino dwarf hunchback Oly in the present time hunting down her daughter, and her past growing up in a freak show. It is a beautifully written and intense family tragedy with some heavy doses of strange.

The Shore by Sara Taylor

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

A lot of The Shore straight up feels like a collection of interlinked short stories. Every chapter, this book jumps to a completely different time and character. But all of these characters living on the Virginia coast and their stories are loosely connected. I'm someone who hates multi-generational sagas, but I ADORED this book and how the stories were told. Gritty, dark, and beautifully written.

Version Control by Dexter Palmer

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

I can't go much into how this book is nonlinear, but all you need to know is this book is partially about a man who may or may not have created a time machine. But don't call it a time machine. He prefers "causality violation device." This novel represents the fluidity of time incredibly and covers a whole bunch of other important real life shit. Dexter Palmer is a clever guy.

The Blue Fox by Sjón

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

The Blue Fox was a close contender for my earlier list of Dream-like Reads. It certainly belongs there. But it's also interesting, because it starts with a weird fable-like story of a man hunting a magical blue fox (that talks??) and then moves to the story of another man and his friendship with a girl who has Down's syndrome. There wouldn't have been a better format in which to find out how these stories connect in this strange little novella.

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

Claire Fuller's debut tells the startling tale of a girl who is taken into the woods by her survivalist father and made to live in a cabin for years. She is told that everyone, including the rest of her family, is dead. They live off the land and have nobody but each other. Until one day main character, Peggy, sees someone else. This novel switches between this story of her childhood and ten years later when she returns to civilization to find her mom. This is an incredible page turner.

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

ADD TO GOODREADS

This favorite of mine was also featured on Weird Dream-like Reads, and part of what lends to that dreamy atmosphere is the format. It jumps back and forth every chapter from main character Jake's present (being told forward) and Jake's recent past (being told backward). As her present story where she's trying to find out who, or what, is killing her sheep on her isolated island is coming to a head, you're also finding out what led her to her drastically solitary lifestyle. Masterfully crafted, All the Birds, Singing delivers all the tension and atmosphere that you could ever desire.

Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

Another opportunity to talk about Mr. Splitfoot? Don't mind if I do. In this nonlinear novel, we follow a young woman named Ruth who lives in a foster home called Jesus Loves You! off the grid. She and her close friend talk to ghosts for money. Then we jump to the future with a woman named Cora, who is Ruth's niece. Ruth shows up, doesn't talk anymore, and takes Cora on a ridiculous journey on foot for many many miles. And Cora doesn't know why. Plus there's a cult. This book is my everything.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

ADD TO GOODREADS

I'm going to be real, I like The Bone Clocks better than this David Mitchell book. But I'd be in big trouble if I didn't mention Cloud Atlas when talking about nonlinear narratives. How it's laid out is absolutely beautiful. The book features stories from drastically different time periods, jumping to new stories until finally we're in the future (at the middle of the book) and then we go back down the line to revisit the stories until we're at the one from the very beginning. And they're all linked to a composition called Cloud Atlas. Some of the sections are fairly slow, but I will love Robert Frobisher's story forever.

What are your favorite nonlinear novels?

The Different Objects Books Can Be: Transformation Through Experimental Formats

Books have boundaries. They are words on paper. They can’t do everything that other forms of media can do. But, sometimes, books can transform themselves right before your very eyes. That’s why experimental formats are amazing. They make you rethink everything that a book can communicate and how you interact with it. Some attempts can be gimmicky, that’s true. When structure is prioritized over story, it can be disastrous. But when the structure propels the story and your connection to it, the results can be breathtaking. Here are some of the items experimental books can become:

A GAME

Games have instructions. Games have rules. Games evoke suspense and strategic thinking. The Harlequin and the Train by Paul Tremblay is a horror novella that requires you to interact with it. Your game piece: a yellow highlighter. The novella instructs you to highlight certain lines of the book. As you read, you’re no longer just the voyeur of a violent accident that takes place in the story, you are participating in it. Anxiety heightens as you get closer to the end of a game, as it will by the end of this short book.

A MAZE

The plot of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is about a labyrinth of sorts, and the book parallels that beautifully. The majority of the book is a manuscript that the narrator found. The manuscript is about a documentary that doesn’t exist in our world or the narrator’s world. The documentary is about a house that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. And it keeps growing. This massive horror novel plays with your mind in many ways, as the stars of the documentary go deeper into their expanding house. And as the manuscript goes on, the format gets really weird. How you read the pages gets confusing. You have to go back and forth between footnotes, the appendix, and the narrator’s thoughts in the margins. You’re not sure which character is going mad, or if you’re losing it. The journey through its paths is as terrifying as it is fascinating.

A TOY YOU FIND IN THE BACK OF THE CLOSET

You know the one. Each time you find it, you can’t get yourself to throw it away. Not because you’re going to DO anything with it. It’s too old and grimy to display anywhere. But it makes you feel something that you can’t feel with anything else. It’s easy to find nostalgia in books like The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson, because they’re so reminiscent of time spent paging back and forth through Choose Your Own Adventure books in the school library until you manage to get to an ending where you don’t fuck everything up. The Unfortunates is a book in a box. There’s a first section, and then you read the rest of the chapters in any random order you want. WHAT.

YOUR PHONE'S TWITTER APP

Ok, so this isn’t really an object. But a phone is! Whatever. Once we’re in the impending singularity, I’m sure our robo-fingers will be able to virtu-caress all the apps we want. Works of poetry and fiction found in alt-lit, such as Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee by Megan Boyle, are turning social media writing into an art form. Boyle’s book is written in tweets, short blog posts, and lists. They read like a very personal diary, often reference pop culture, and explore the malaise of a struggling twenty-something who grew up on the internet. She can be funny, highly intelligent, and poignantly sad all within 140 characters. Reading her book is like stalking your coolest, funniest friend’s social media.

A BRAIN

While some experimental books try to spiral you out of our normal world, showing you the abstract complexities of life, some bore deep into you. The experimental form can be used to mimic the act of being human. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride attempts to do this by creating a whole new stream-of-consciousness style grammar, replicating what it would be like to actually be inside the main character’s head. Words aren’t where you want them to be, and neither is punctuation. It’s difficult both in structure and in topic. You have to learn to read again. How to be a person again. And you have to learn how to really deeply understand somebody’s mind, even when what you’ll find is almost impossible to bear.



What have experimental books become for you? 
 

Top Ten Books for Readers Who Like Experimental Formats

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

I love experimental fiction. So much. Sure it can be gimmicky sometimes if not enough thought is put into the story, but I think that experimental formats can add a whole new layer to a book. Playing with style can enhance the atmosphere and the story being told. I'm all for books that take that leap, that do things books aren't expected to do. Here are my top ten picks for books with experimental formats.

                  

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle - This book is crazy AND beautiful. And written by the lead singer of the Mountain Goats WHAT. This story is told backwards chronologically. You don't think it would work, but it does. So well.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski - I sound like a broken record, but this is one of the most amazing, labyrinthian books. The book is a manuscript that the narrator found. He interjects in footnotes. The manuscript is about a documentary that isn't real in our world or the narrator's. And the documentary is about a house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Some excellent subtle horror happens as the format begins to get strange, the text skews, and you don't know if the writer, the narrator, or you are going crazy.

Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball - I'm still not entirely sure what to think of this book, but I know that I haven't stopped thinking about it. This is a story about a string of murders, a false confession, and an imprisoned man who won't speak. And it's entirely made up of interviews, photographs, and other police-y documents. It's a weird one.


                 


The Call by Yannick Murphy - This book is entirely written like this: "He said: [insert dialogue]. She did: [insert action]," etc. I have never ever seen anything formatted this before in my life.

Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee by Megan Boyle - Hilarious, moving stream of consciousness that's often written in tweet or list form. The most fun to read. I'm lending this one out perpetually.

If On a Winter's Night, a Traveler by Italo Calvino - A book in a book! Sometimes it's second person (to you, the reader), sometimes it's not (when it's portions of the book in the book)! This one's a classic.


                   


The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski - From the author who did House of Leaves, this small story is another departure from typical narratives. We're being told the story from 5 different people. They each have different colored quotation marks for us to determine who is speaking. And every other page is a piece of embroidered art. And the story is fantastical to boot.

Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme - Barthelme is one of the pioneers of experimental fiction. This collection of stories is absolutely fantastic. Each one plays with a new style and format, so you never know what's coming next. And the plots themselves are downright weird. Some funny, some dark, a lot both. Here's his story, The School, which you can check out. This one isn't that experimental as far as the format goes, but it's short and the story's hilarious.

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride - I didn't like this one as I thought I would, but it would be a shame not to mention it at all. If you want a book that plays with every notion you had of how grammar should work, check it out. McBride's stream of consciousness tale is dark and written in a form you really have to work through.

               

Suicide by Edouard Leve - This one's a downer, not to be read if you're not in the mood for that. It's a beautiful stream of consciousness novella where Leve examines what it means for someone to commit suicide. Dark sidenote: he turned the manuscript into his publisher ten days before killing himself. SORRY. It's actually really touching and profound. If you're looking for elegant stream of consciousness, this is it.




What's your favorite experimental book? Have you read these?