Blake Butler

This book isn’t even proofread.

Ok, I understand where the author’s who blurbed this are coming from—maybe we do need to share this kind of pain with one another, destigmatize suicide etc… but I don’t agree that this book is about his love for Molly. I agree with the Twitter post that called this revenge porn. I do. I don’t trust this book or this writer at all. His sentences are unwieldy and messy and he doesn’t even care. He confuses hot air and genius. Molly’s poems are so lovely and sharp and dangerous. Read those.… (mer)

Ever starts out with everything already upside down. The world is wrong and has been for some time. The main character is both a girl and a house and they are the same thing and they are also, it seems, the world? Possibly. I need to read it again. This is a daring book that is innovative and experimental and poetic but all at once readable and vibrating in creative energy. Rooms. Everything is room and the house and the bath tub and all the life and memories that we inhabit. It is architecture by way of horror and fragements and also art. This book is so full of art and the are is highly part of the story.

Also brackets. So many brackets. Blake Butler knows how to use brackets. Brackets suggest opening and closing. Throughout the book the woman, girl, is in and out of rooms folding and unfolding becoming and unbecoming. So the brackets are plays on poetry and in/within.The brackets are important to the book, which is all about open and closed spaces and yawning chasms and riddles. I’m picky about layout and typographic tricks in fiction; if you’re not writing what you’d call a hybrid, anything beyond the traditional or slightly modified words and punctuation of your language are all you get, unless you have a very good reason, such as expressing the idea that a girl thinks in terms of small spaces.

Basically the book is a puzzle and also a poem but also a story and also graphic art. It needs to be read to see how he breaks apart reality - the reality of the character - the reality of the book - the reality of reality. Its good. Parts of it are moody and affecting but mostly its just really great weird fiction by way of architecture and 'the home' and, as ever, family.

Good. Also, weird.… (mer)