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Palimpsest

Catherynne M. Valente (Goodreads Author)

3.66 · Rating details · 4,728 ratings · 830 reviews

In the Cities of Coin and Spice and In the Night Garden introduced readers to the unique and intoxicating imagination of Catherynne M. Valente. Now she weaves a lyrically erotic spell of a place where the grotesque and the beautiful reside and the passport to our most secret fantasies begins with a stranger’s kiss.…

Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the ...more

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Paperback, 367 pages

Published February 24th 2009 by Spectra

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Apr 10, 2012 Nataliya rated it really liked it

Shelves: hugo-nebula-nominees-and-winners, valente-whimsical-magic, location-is-the-true-protagonist, 2012-reads

Did I, a brand-spankin'-new gynecologist, just read a book about a sexually transmitted city??? Yeah, I guess so much for that whole 'don't bring your work home' thing...

"To touch a person... to sleep with a person... is to become a pioneer," she whispered then, "a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to

Did I, a brand-spankin'-new gynecologist, just read a book about a sexually transmitted city??? Yeah, I guess so much for that whole 'don't bring your work home' thing...

"To touch a person... to sleep with a person... is to become a pioneer," she whispered then, "a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to them. I have been so many times to countries like that. I have learned how to make coffee in all their ways, how to share food, how to comfort, how to dance in the native ways."

Valente's trademark lush, ornamental, stylized, and vivid, almost paintbrush-stroke-like writing is amplified in this novel. Every sentence is surreal, dripping with imagery, soaking with color, saturated with emotions. The writing is melodic and lyrical almost to the absurd, to the point that you almost want to shake it off you and return to the world of short phrases and transparent meanings. Valente is excellent at weaving a gorgeous tapestry of language, zeroing in on small details and scenes and describing them with such poignancy that you feel almost trapped in the surreal world that she creates. It's wonderful to read it, but it's also almost exhausting, since everything is raw and on the edge, everything is exaggerated, everything is painfully exposed and amplified. The words swirl, and so do the emotions contained in them. The disjointed and staggering narration, fading in and out like in a dream, is both enchanting and oppressing, and I did love the combination of those.

The rawness of emotions and at the same time the dreamlike quality of them is in the soul of this book. Forget the plot or the characters or any semblance of a traditional story. It's not about that. It's about the pain of love and loss and loneliness. It's the story of loss and need and desperate longing. It's a story about finding a place where you belong, where you feel alive, no matter how painful and hard and absurd the journey there may seem. It's not a story about finding a happy ending; it's about both feeling alive and just dulling the pain. It's about choice and the lack of it, desire and duty, fulfillment and abandonment.

The world Valente paints with her word-strokes is weird to the extreme, surreal and dreamlike. The main character here is a dreamlike fantastical city, full of magic and life and strangeness. The city of Palimpsest, filled with living mating trains, mechanical insects, houses living as small children, rivers of clothes and milk, chimerae, and love, and death. This is not a paradise for those who manage to find it; despite it being more 'real' to them than the reality, it is still angry and dangerous and full of its own prejudices and bigotry. But it is a place for those who don't belong elsewhere - like our four characters, broken and lost and tragic and pathetic and beautiful and repulsive all at the same time; multifaceted like the city of their dreams.

"November has been taken, she knows this, and one does not argue with the one who takes. No one whose father was a librarian is ignorant of their Greek myth: when Hades hauls you into his chariot, you do not argue that he has been rude not to ask if you really wanted to go."

"This is Palimpsest, November. This is the real world. Nothing comes without pain and death."

The back cover of the book talks about a "lyrically erotic spell of a place where the grotesque and the beautiful reside and the passport to our most secret fantasies begins with a stranger's kiss..." While I agree on the 'grotesque and beautiful' part, I want to question the erotic part.

Yes, this book is filled to the brim with sex (as expected, since sex with strangers is really the only way to get into Palimpsest - you sleep with strangers, you get a mark on your skin, a palimpsestic rash of sorts, and then you have an urge to pass it on, and so it spreads, infecting others like a true STD), but after a few initial encounters the eroticism and any semblance of enjoyable disappears and the characters are left with sex as a chore, a means to the end, casual past the point of enjoyment, undiscriminatory, dreaded by them, exhausting, unwanted, painful; sex as nothing more than a quick and undesired interlude on their way to their obsession. It is not erotic; it is exhausting. Like a true sexually transmitted disease, Palimpsest is accompanied by regret and pain. And I thought Valente handled that very well and showed it with grace and dignity while not softening the blows in any way. (However, my gynecologist self cringed quite a few times at all the unprotected sex that the majority of them were having - I mean, c'mon, is Palimpsest really worth gonorrhea or warts or unintended pregnancy or syphilis? Seriously, people, stop for a second to put that condom on. Please.)

"But this is how you do it: through the body and into the world. You fuck; you travel. That sounds crude, and you know, it usually is. It's usually ugly, and fat, and sweaty, and lonely. Luckily, it's also usually quick. But afterwards ... we find a place where we belong."

I was torn about the rating for this one. I'm a huge Valente fan, being completely won over by Deathless (one of the best books I've read this year), The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland... and Silently and Very Fast. All of those have instantly grabbed my attention and held me, enchanted, in their charms and embrace until the very last page. Palimpsest, however, was a very different experience, winning my affection very slowly, almost reluctantly, sometimes pushing me away, sometimes luring me in, but still in the end maintaining a firm grip on me - just like the surreal city of Palimpsest did on the four characters in this book.

"You need me," said Xiaohui breathlessly, pulling November over her, sliding hands under her belt to claw and knead. "You need me."
"Don’t you mean ‘I need you'?" whispered November in the girl’s ear.
"No," she sighed, arching her back, tipping her chin up, making herself easy to kiss, easy to fall into, easy to devour. "You’ll see. You’ll see."

I'm glad I did not give up on this book. While it has its flaws, while it's so heavily stylized that it almost throws you out of the story while simultaneously somehow immersing you in it, while endorsing choices and actions that I normally would very vehemently disagree with, this book did provide me with a very unique experience in one of the weirdest universes created on paper. It made me think and ache and sigh and long for things that lurk at the bottom of my murky soul. I loved the frequent mentions of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland - apparently written because of fans' requests after this book. And for all of that, I'm rounding up the 3.5-star rating to 4 stars. Valente's writing just has that something special that speaks to my soul, and I cannot resist it.

"There are no tigers for us, just a city, waiting, and it loves us, in whatever ways a city can love."
"Maybe the tigers are there. Maybe they're just better at hiding than trains and tenors."

...more

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Sep 22, 2015 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fanboy-goes-squee, worldbuilding-sf, fantasy, 2016-shelf, sci-fi

Re-Read 2/28/20:

Imagine, just for a moment, that I recaptured all of the same glory, the beautiful prose, and the lost, wonderous FEELING that I got from reading Palimpsest the second time.

Imagine that it just got better with a re-read.

Especially now that I've read all the Fairyland books, this wonderfully adult and sexual version, along with all its myriad mini-tragedies, only deepens my appreciation of this book.

Original Review:

It is a reverence, a sting of the holy, as rich and powerful and d Re-Read 2/28/20:

Imagine, just for a moment, that I recaptured all of the same glory, the beautiful prose, and the lost, wonderous FEELING that I got from reading Palimpsest the second time.

Imagine that it just got better with a re-read.

Especially now that I've read all the Fairyland books, this wonderfully adult and sexual version, along with all its myriad mini-tragedies, only deepens my appreciation of this book.

Original Review:

It is a reverence, a sting of the holy, as rich and powerful and desired as honey, and the book rolls on the tongues of paupers and kings alike, like fire, like hard cocks, like the welcoming embrace of a whole city. Indeed, this book is a love poem written by and scratched out by the city, itself, of Palimpsest, the fae kingdom of adulthood, of loss, abandonment, of scars and mutilations, of loveless sex and all the dirty waters of the world, of the ripe and blossoming heat of four who will finally make one, of the discourse of the bull and the serpent, and last, but not least, of all the maps of the universe, be they the eight-thousand door train or the touch of the third rail, be it the entire catalog of all animals, imagined or real, plastered across the soul, be it madness and the touch of the wet lady, or be it the thousand bees in the belly, this is a novel of such grand depth and squirming desire, that I am literally tongue-tied in tracing the map upon the skin.

Or, put a bit more simply, I liked this novel.

It was sadness given form, with just a hint of hope to flavor the flood of despair, of obsession and longing. It, like all of Valente's writing that I've had the immense joy of reading, has been so utterly well-read and well-crafted and so very deeply loved, never fails to amaze and shock and make me want to get on my knees and say, "I am not worthy."

There are a few technical things I'd like to say.

I've never read an author with such a confident use of semi-colons. She writes whole novels as if they were poetry. Indeed, the plot is never so easy to parse, and the very act of reading it requires nearly as much imagination as the author, just to make love to the words we read and fill it (or be filled) with a sense of completeness.

Never imagine that this is anything other than brilliant.

But then again, never imagine it is easy. This book is a lover that will show you all her dark secrets and then leave you as soon as she makes you hold her hair so that she may vomit over the side of your bed. ...more

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Apr 06, 2012 carol. marked it as don-t-count

Shelves: urban-fantasy, abandoned-without-prejudice, erotic

Let's be honest. The reason this book has sat on my shelf for months is because it just isn't my style. Three months later and only halfway through, and I find it time to resignedly face defeat. I love Valente's lush prose; the vivid detail that appeals to all my senses and perfectly conjures a scene. I just have a hard time with the underlying sexually transmitted disease/desire imagery, and am finding the characters a challenge to care about in their obsession.

She--or I--might have bit off a ...more

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Apr 26, 2012 Kelly rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, melancholia, fantasy-and-scifi, its-the-quiet-ones, shes-quite-an-original-my-dear, goth-goth-baby, woundedsoulsandfragileflowers, romantical

Despite everything I am about to tell you, I really had several reasons to not like this book.

For one thing, the plot was really a bare excuse for one. It seemed like it was really more of an excuse for Valente to roam about at will, locking her mind's eye on new treasures to describe in the world she'd created. A search for character development yields little. The characters in this book have little 'development' to speak of. They are the incarnation, for the most part, of that Rice line- "Peo ...more

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Apr 08, 2018 Heidi The Reader rated it liked it

Shelves: urban-fantasy, the-numinous-book-club, fantasy-and-sci-fi, fiction

Sex and sleep with a marked individual is the way to the city of Palimpsest, a mystical and deadly place that exists beyond the borders of our world.

The first time you cross over, your spirit is bound with four other travelers. For what purpose, no one knows.

"Where you go in Palimpsest, you are bound to these strangers who happened onto Orlande's salon just when you did, and you will go nowhere, eat no capon or dormouse, drink no oversweet port that they do not also taste, and they will visit no ...more

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Nov 28, 2012 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2013, reviews-4-stars, reviews, my-sci-fanta-side, valente

A Book of Marvelous Things

"I was so alone. I had only books and dreams and brushes then."

The four protagonists, two male, two female, who live variously in California, New York, Rome and Kyoto, have their own separate obsessions - trains, keys, bees and books – but don’t yet know true love. They crave "the low vibratory tones of shared obsession... real lovers, the kind that make coffee for each other and read the same books".

In this current world, they are taught two lessons: the sour ...more

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Jun 11, 2009 JW rated it did not like it

Shelves: fantasy, gave-up

There is a subgenre of fantasy (although some people would try to kill me for that classification) called "New Weird". In my experience what this means is "interesting ideas executed in the most boring fashion possible." Palimpsest is exactly that. In particular, New Weird authors seem to get so caught up in their world building they forget to develop any kind of a plot, or at least spend so much time describing said world building that the plot doesn't appear until well into the book.

I don't li ...more

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Nov 20, 2016 Phrynne rated it it was ok

I laboured through this book, determined to finish it and not really enjoying much about it at all. The prose is beautiful but very heavy going and it goes on for 367 pages. It takes a lot of concentration and effort to keep on top of who all the characters are and I did not feel it was worth it in the end.
This is the second book I have tried by this author and I guess I now have to admit her writing style and I do not go together.

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Jun 11, 2009 Kara Babcock rated it it was ok

Shelves: ebook, 2010-read, urban-fantasy, fantasy, hugo-nominee

Books create whole other worlds, and nowhere is this phenomenon more explicit than in fantasy and science fiction. More than just telling a story, great books transport the reader to a new setting, one where the rules might be different. It takes impossibilities and makes them possible. The author, then, is more than a storyteller—he or she is an architect, a craftsman executing a careful and intricate design. This is what we often mean when we speak of worldbuilding.

Depending upon how the term ...more

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Feb 28, 2020 Trish rated it it was amazing

This is one of Valente’s older works that I hadn’t read yet. As a total fangirl, I had to remedy that, of course.

We start off in a strange world where a factory produces vermin for the titular city of Palimsest. Soon, we meet the 4 protagonists, who are from our world and have arrived here after having had sex with a stranger. Because that is how you get here. No tornados or magic wardrobes, no enchanted doors. Just sex. Very intimate, satisfying and meaningful sex (for some), mind you.

You know ...more

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Jun 12, 2010 Jacob rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy-etc, 00-old-reviews

July 2010

Palimpsest. What a city. Entered only in dreams, its streets and districts are marked in the flesh. Its maps appear tattooed on the skin after sex. Copulation with other people (victims? sufferers?) who bear the marks grants more access; every orgasm is a ticket to another street corner, another station. It is the strangest of venereal diseases: the city as STD.

What I want to know is, how did Catherynne M. Valente get to this before China Miéville?

It’s probably for the best. Where New C ...more

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Mar 05, 2017 Gabrielle rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, read-in-2017, own-a-copy, reviewed, erotica, steampunk, speculative-fiction, weird, magical-realism

3 and a half stars, rounded to 4.

The first thing you need to understand when you crack open a Catherynne M. Valente book is that she is a poet who writes novels. Her sentences and descriptions are dreamlike, her words carefully chosen but often surprising. I would personally like to find a good seat in that woman's brain and just watch her thoughts fly by because the images she conjures are often some of the most beautiful ones I have ever read.

A criticism I have often read about her is that the 3 and a half stars, rounded to 4.

The first thing you need to understand when you crack open a Catherynne M. Valente book is that she is a poet who writes novels. Her sentences and descriptions are dreamlike, her words carefully chosen but often surprising. I would personally like to find a good seat in that woman's brain and just watch her thoughts fly by because the images she conjures are often some of the most beautiful ones I have ever read.

A criticism I have often read about her is that there is a lot of style over substance. And honestly, that does happen. When you get lost in the beauty of her language, her plots can sometimes get a little confusing. But to me that's a minor irritant because I just love to bask in the whimsical beauty of whatever the Hell she feels like writing.

I put this book on my "erotica" shelf, but there is a lot more to it than sex. In fact, the sex quickly becomes a means to an end and is not the focus of the story very long. Because this story is about cities, about our inner worlds and how beautiful and guarded those secret place within ourselves are, and how hard it is to access them and truly understand them. Yes, there is a lot of sex in this book, but I found it made me ponder the nature of intimacy much more than carnality.

Palimpsest is a sexually transmitted city: only by sleeping with people who have already been there, and wear its mark on their skin, can you access it, and once you have, the city will obsesses you and you will only care about going back. People who have visited Palimpsest can recognize each other: something in their body language gives them away just as much as the partial map of the city that appears on their skin, like a tattoo or a scar. The book follows the journey of four such visitors: a Japanese train enthusiast, an American beekeeper, a Russian locksmith and an Italian bookbinder.

The book is composed of vignettes of our four characters in our world, and their attempts to go back to Palimpsest, and then what happens to them when they are in the elusive city. Everything is beautifully written, but to be honest, nothing much happens... The quarto is finally given a sort-of goal about halfway through the book, but even then, things move at a snail's pace.

My husband had an interesting theory about the way one's first visit to Palimpsest and getting the strange map tattoo could be a metaphor about losing one's virginity and how being sexually active affects one's view of the world, how it influences interactions with people (who are now also potential partners) and changes one's behavior. He has a point: sex does change a person, and not just the first time. Various experiences do leave their mark, whether on the body or on the mind: it can be a disease or a pregnancy, but it can also be a cherished memory or a regret.

The story could also be taken to be about being haunted by a place, a memory that left a really strong mark on one's soul and the fruitless quest to recapture it. I am noticing a common theme favored by the New Weird writers: Vandermeer has Ambergris, Mieville has New Crobuzon... All these imaginary urban landscapes are fascinating, baroque and beautiful creations, and now I feel like I should read "Invisible Cities" and see where their inspiration seems to have come from.

I am rating it 3 and a half stars rounded up to 4 because really, Valente's prose is just so freaking beautiful that I can't find it in me to round it down. That being said, "Deathless" and "Radiance" had actual plots, which made them much more enjoyable reads (for my structured mind, anyway). "Palimpsest" is a gorgeous but ultimately frustrating read. ...more

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Dec 14, 2019 Allison Hurd rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, fem-author

What a strange book. I love Valente's silvery, magical prose, and the way she weaves the everyday with the bizarre in a way that makes all the bizarre things seem commonplace and the everyday things seem electric. But even with all that, this book felt a bit more like someone retelling you their dream upon waking than it felt like crossing viscerally into that dream.

CONTENT WARNING: (view spoiler) ...more

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Jul 01, 2010 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy, read2011, favorites, read2010, league-extraordinary-dorks, hugo-winners-or-nominees

Anything I say about this book just will not do it justice. It can't describe how I found myself holding my breath at writing that felt so intimate, almost like I shouldn't be reading it. Completely immersive and beautiful and disturbing and I can't wait to go back and read everything else she has written.

Kind of like if Jeanette Winterson and Neil Gaiman wrote a book together, after reading The Pillow Book.

I hadn't heard of Valente yet, and only read her because this book was nominated for the ...more

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May 23, 2020 Acqua rated it liked it

Shelves: qf, q, mi-ndv, italy-fail, qm, loved-it, w-ones, fantasy, q-allcast, contemp-sff-mr

3.5 stars, I think.
Palimpsest is a story about a sexually transmitted city.
It's strange and uncomfortable; it has an idea and goes for it without ever trying to hide that, without compromises, which is something I always appreciate. It could be seen as a response to the Greek myth that says people are only half of a whole, or the soulmate trope in general: it asks why does it have to be two? As I'm someone who loves stories about cities and human sexuality but not about soulmates, I really liked ...more

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May 25, 2020 Jennifer rated it liked it

Catherynne Valente writes somewhere at the crossroads of Italo Calvino (dense, erudite, inexplicable), The Travels of Marco Polo (bizarre travelogue with little commentary on the weirdness), and fever dream. Palimpsest leans hard in the fever dream direction. This is a city of dreams and desire, transmitted like a sexual infection: those who have slept with a traveler to Palimpsest wake up with a sprawling tattoo of a map somewhere on their body, and the next person to sleep with them will be tr Catherynne Valente writes somewhere at the crossroads of Italo Calvino (dense, erudite, inexplicable), The Travels of Marco Polo (bizarre travelogue with little commentary on the weirdness), and fever dream. Palimpsest leans hard in the fever dream direction. This is a city of dreams and desire, transmitted like a sexual infection: those who have slept with a traveler to Palimpsest wake up with a sprawling tattoo of a map somewhere on their body, and the next person to sleep with them will be transported to that particular part of Palimpsest. But they can only stay while they are asleep, and they cannot see more of Palimpsest beyond the area tattooed upon their lover. Almost all awaken with a burning desire to return to the city, which promises all the things they have yearned for in their waking lives.

This is, no doubt, the weirdest portal fantasy I've ever read, weird in a way that only Valente could do. It's also a hard book to read: unlike The Orphan's Tales, which enchanted me from start to finish, Palimpsest walks the line between revulsion and intrigue, a push-pull interaction with the reader that makes for a very uncomfortable reading experience. I would put it down and pick it up again five minutes later in spite of myself.

Push: the only way into Palimpsest is sex with a fellow tattooed traveler. The need to return to Palimpsest demands both quantity and diversity of partners, but for all that the four central characters are almost consumed whole by their desires - for a drowned sister, a lost wife, direction, belonging - this is a book of sex devoid of sexual desire. Sex is a transaction, a utilitarian, ugly thing that uses other people as doorways. Attraction, respect, affection, and pleasure play no role: it's simply fucking. Our characters, spread between Kyoto, New York City, California, and Rome seek out tattooed strangers with the same undiscriminating desperation that junkies seek out dealers. It's bald and horrible; they feel it, and they suffer intensely while pursuing their shared obsession. One character walks shirtless through the streets of New York City in the winter for weeks to advertise his tattooed belly, hoping to attract another Palimpsest traveler.

Pull: no one writes fantasy worlds like Catherynne Valente. Her head is an exceedingly strange place, and surely that's one of the great pleasures of books - to take you inside the weirdness of other people's heads. She writes poetry the way the rest of us breathe, and she is at her finest when describing the minute, sensuous details that make up her city:

He is a breeder of snails and dwells in a house of three stories. In his youth he covered each of the floors in rich soils of black and red, leaves of gold and green, grains brown and sweet, violet petals as thick as a pat of butter. In his middle age, birch and fig saplings sprouted through the kitchen tile; hedges ring the furniture. His great petit-gris slowly move from parlor to wash-closet, gorging themselves in paroxysms of helical rapture. They mate in the chimney, sing softly the hymns of snails on the windowsills when the moon blanches the verdant paint to black.

And

November veils herself and takes the finch by its roasted beak, pushing it into her mouth with two fingers, her remaining blessings. It is sweet, at first, the burnished skin and meat, glazed in something like brandy and something like plum wine. But as she chews - methodically, for it fills her mouth to bursting - the organs rupture, bitter and bilious, a taste like despair, like the loss of love. And deeper, the bones shiver and crack and cut her - the taste of her blood flows in, salty as tears shed over a ruined body, mingling with the marrow, and it is sweet again, sweet as herself, herself remaining at the end of all trials. And November can see why the veil is needed. No god should bear witness to a woman devouring a meal of herself.

Within Palimpsest are trains like biological organisms, a homunculus made of bees, blank children who are licked into shape and life, intricate tea rituals, old wars, mute people with transplanted animal limbs and heads. And beyond these wonders are old scars, failed relationships, hallucinations; the luggage that travelers can't shed, even in Palimpsest.

This is my fourth book by Valente, and while the intensity with which her characters desire is constant throughout her work, they seem to suffer the most for it in this book. Still, I was prepared to give it four stars as the threads of the four characters start to weave together and Palimpsest relinquishes some of its mysteries. Unfortunately, I didn't like the ending - the desires that have flagellated our four characters this whole time go out with a whimper of satiation, and this seems pat, easy, and wrong; an ending that doesn't suit the complex and often sinister role that Palimpsest has played. ...more

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Mar 05, 2014 Megan Baxter rated it really liked it

It's odd that, in trying to figure out how to explain this book, I first have to figure out exactly what is the sexually transmitted disease. It's not citizenship in the strange city of Palimpsest - that has to be earned. It's not passage to the city, as that has to be achieved, every time someone goes. It's the passport, I guess. The black markings of the city streets on the skin that never leave, that mark a person as someone who could go to Palimpsest, if they choose. Tattoo as sexually trans ...more

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Aug 04, 2009 Stefan rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Stefan by: Camille

Shelves: fantasy, library-loan

The first thing that strikes you about this book is the gorgeous prose. Every sentence is crafted with the utmost care, resulting in a novel that almost reads like poetry. It simply begs to be read out loud. I've read many books that attempt this kind of lush prose, but Palimpsest is one of the most successful and most beautiful.

Palimpsest is a sexually transmitted city. People who have been there have a small tattoo - a piece of the city's map - somewhere on their body. Sleep with them and you The first thing that strikes you about this book is the gorgeous prose. Every sentence is crafted with the utmost care, resulting in a novel that almost reads like poetry. It simply begs to be read out loud. I've read many books that attempt this kind of lush prose, but Palimpsest is one of the most successful and most beautiful.

Palimpsest is a sexually transmitted city. People who have been there have a small tattoo - a piece of the city's map - somewhere on their body. Sleep with them and you are transported there. When you wake up, back in the real world, you will find a small tattoo of another part of Palimpsest on your body - and you will want to go back.

The story follows four people who are all newcomers to Palimpsest - a young Japanese woman, a beekeeper, a locksmith, a bookbinder. They all have lost something in the real world and are naturally drawn to Palimpsest. As the story progresses, more and more details about their lives, and about the strange city of Palimpsest, are revealed. While the novel, at first, seems like four more or less independent stories, told in alternating chapters, slowly but surely a plot develops that connects everything and leads to a beautiful, bittersweet conclusion.

An interesting aspect of the novel is its strained eroticism. After the initial "connections" that introduce the four protagonists to Palimpsest, they find themselves wanting to return, which can only be done by sleeping with another "infected" person. The resulting scenes are almost uncomfortable to read - while they're at times fairly explicit, the sex is mainly a mode of transportation, something you have to get through.

This is a novel to read slowly and savor, because it'll just be over all too soon. I found myself rereading entire chapters after turning the last page. I would recommend this without hesitation to fans of China Mieville, but also to anyone else who appreciates a slow-moving, lyrical and entirely unique story. Absolutely gorgeous.

(If you'd like to check out a sample, here's a link to the short story "Palimpsest": http://www.sensesfive.com/samples/pal... ) ...more

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Mar 05, 2009 Jen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, re-read-in-2016, read-in-2009, favorites, urban-fantasy, re-read-in-2009, re-read-in-2014

This is urban fantasy where the main character is a "fantasy" city. You can't get to Palimpsest unless you've slept with someone who's been there. You can't get to any other parts of the city unless you sleep with someone else.

It's an intoxicating read. For the continuing presence of sex in the narrative, this is not a romance. It's mentioned, even described, but it's a vehicle by which the human characters are able to find their way around a city where they seem to be meant to be.

Like The Orpha ...more

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Jan 29, 2014 Robyn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2016

Definitely not for everyone, but read this if you want incredible, fanciful prose and entrance into a world defined by Valente's capacious imagination. An incredible journey to a city real and unreal. ...more

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Jun 09, 2010 Althea Ann rated it really liked it

My book club selection for the month.
I'd heard Valente described as a steampunk author, but I really
wouldn't classify this as being in that genre. I've yet to acquire her
other books, but I'm on the lookout for them!
Outside of our reality, there is a city called Palimpsest. Those who
have visited the city mysteriously acquire a tattoo-like mark
somewhere on their skin - and an inexplicable desire, almost an
addiction, driving them to return. The only way the city can be
entered is through sex with an ...more

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Sep 05, 2010 Sandra rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, ebook

I have to think about this one a while. What a weird experience.

9/21 - after mulling a while, I decided on 3 stars because I both loved and hated it. I decided I had to read it almost stream of consciousness as it's written, since stopping to ponder the words detracted from the mood. At times I was annoyed, irritated, aggravated by the characters. At other times I felt an almost unbearable soaring of spirit and longing along with the characters. At times I almost stopped reading wondering why I ...more

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Jun 11, 2010 Sandi rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, 2010, hugo-nominees-2010

Palimpsest is one seriously weird book. Consider the concept: If you have sex with someone with a map tattoo, you will "dream" that you are in the city of Palimpsest. Palimpsest is a really f'd up place, but people are desperate to go back. They are so desperate to go back and visit other parts of the city that they will have sex with anybody who has part of the map tattooed on them, sexual attraction and orientation have nothing to do with anything.

While there are a lot of sexual encounters in ...more

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Apr 26, 2012 Tracy rated it really liked it

Shelves: speculative-fiction, library-books, adult-fiction, beautiful-and-indescribable

I finally finished this. I've been reading a little here and a little there for weeks and I finally finished this. I think it took me so long to read for the reasons Nataliya described in her review, the book alternately pulls you in and pushes you away. It is so filled with loss at times it was unbearable to go on. But I'm glad I did. For one thing the writing in this book is exquisite. Catherine Valente is a poet and it shows:

"She had dreamed heavily and the dream clung to her still-November

I finally finished this. I've been reading a little here and a little there for weeks and I finally finished this. I think it took me so long to read for the reasons Nataliya described in her review, the book alternately pulls you in and pushes you away. It is so filled with loss at times it was unbearable to go on. But I'm glad I did. For one thing the writing in this book is exquisite. Catherine Valente is a poet and it shows:

"She had dreamed heavily and the dream clung to her still-November had always been a prodigy of dreams. Her father, a librarian, had made her write them down, and perhaps this had been the beginning of the slim brown books which now numbered so very many. She dreamed in color, more than color, in shades of gold and scarlet impossible in the waking world. She dreamed in languages she did and did not know, she dreamed strange and wonderful faces, narratives of recursive complexity, and her recall was meticulous, detailed, perfect as a list."

"She often felt that she chased the ideal cup of coffee in her mind from table to table, the rich, thick, creamy coffee, spicy, bittersweet, that betrayed no hint of thinness or chemical flavoring, nothing less than total, fathomless devotion to the state of being itself. Every morning she pulled a delicate cup from its brass hook and filled it, hoping that it would be dark and deep and secret as a forest, and each morning it cooled too fast, had too much milk, stained the cup, made her nervous."

And that is the author writing prosaically about every day things...her descriptions of Palimpsest itself are fantastic, gorgeous. Palimpsest is a city, a sexually transmitted city. You fuck someone who has been there, who bears the tattoo of it's streets somewhere on their body and you awaken in Palimpsest. When you fall asleep again you wake up back in this world with the tattoo somewhere on your body. The next person you fuck (if they haven't already been there) catches the city and the tattoo from you. It's like a drug, you are addicted. You become desperate to go back. You will fuck anyone to go back. "But this is how you do it: through the body and into the world. You fuck; you travel. That sounds crude, and you know usually it is. It's usually ugly, and fat, and sweaty, and lonely. Luckily, it's also usually quick. But afterwards ... we find a place where we belong."

When you enter Palimpsest the first time you are bound to three strangers who have entered Palimpsest for the first time at the same instant as you. In order to emigrate in Palimpsest you have to find those three strangers and have sex with them, and enter Palimpsest together as a group. Some of these groups of four are splintered by the death of one of the four, some groups are destroyed because one of the four can't bear the city...it is too much, to beautiful, too colorful, too depraved. Some groups are never able to find each other and are so reduced to mindlessly coupling with anyone, anyone just to get back. The anguish of these lost souls trying to find their way back is like a tearing at the heart.

This book isn't for everyone obviously. Some will object to the sex, others don't care for poetry. Some will find it to dark and too sad. But it is beautiful. I'd like to find some of Cathrynne Valente's poetry I think. ...more

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Nov 19, 2011 Meg rated it it was ok

Shelves: favourites

To summarize:

Pros: Crocodile conga lines. Logophile’s dream. Rampant potential for “that’s what she said” jokes. Rampant potential for terrible puns. Barry Manilow. Euphemisms. So multicultural. Pirate frogs. Rum. Talking animals. Taking everything out of context.

Cons: Frog psychic wrapped in ragged fox fur - PETA cries, foxes die. Bugs. Gregor Samsa. Ear sex. No lols. Strange analogies. Train vagina visuals. Sexually Transmitted Tattoos. Elitism.

Usually book cover summaries are so trite and b ...more

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Jan 04, 2021 Stacia rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2021

Makes me think of strangers in an Edward Hopper painting pursuing sex like addicts needing drugs in order to transport them through a crack into another world that might be a cross between Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali's paintings dancing with Renaissance art, mystical and surreal, beautiful and harsh. A strange and haunting world on both sides of the coin.

Parts were lyrical and beautiful. Parts were repulsive and disgusting. It's very floaty and plotless for large portions, though there is ...more

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Dec 22, 2009 Marley rated it really liked it

This book is REALLY interesting, and a lot smuttier than I expected. The sense of all these people with a collective obsession that pierces the normal bounds of sexual decorum, and the way that such a bond DOESN'T necessarily mean they treat each other with understanding or warmth or kindness--now THAT is an interesting set of ideas.

Separately, this first book of Valente's I've read has some fascinating language. I definitely see what people are saying when they put her in the "really out there ...more

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Sep 23, 2015 Sarah rated it it was amazing

Do you guys know that I almost missed out on this wonder? Somewhere, and I can't find where, I saw it labeled as erotica and I have a very strong aversion to that genre. But then this came up in a book group and I do really love Valente's work, so I decided to give it a try.

This is a long way of wandering around the fact that I almost missed out not on a book, but an Absolutely Phenomenal Experience. I loved it. I loved every single second of this book. The prose is gorgeous, lush, and evocative ...more

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Apr 17, 2012 Kat rated it liked it

Shelves: dark-and-urban-fantasy, dude-where-is-the-plot, terrific-covers, unfortunately-abandoned, mindblowingly-well-written, poetry

"Sei pressed her cheek against the cold glass; strips of black mountains tore by under latern-blue clouds beyond her wide window. She knew a man was watching her - the way men on trains always watched her. The train car rocked gently from side to side, hushing its charges like a worried mother. She chewed on the ends of her dark blue hair. A stupid childhood habit, but Sei couldn't let it go. Her skin prickled as the man's eyes slid over her back."

The poetic prose is so beautiful that Palimpsest ...more

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Jan 08, 2012 sologdin rated it liked it

Shelves: burns-like-cold-iron

Acknowlegdes that "the source of all suffering is desire" (106) while charting out an immigration narrative wherein the primary object of desire is not precisely defined, other than the act of immigration itself. The narrative has no need to explain, and does not explain, the reasons that everyone is so keen to get to the eponymous city--it's lacanian objet petit a. And it drives the prospective immigrants insane, despite the lack of definition, so much so that they police their own membership f Acknowlegdes that "the source of all suffering is desire" (106) while charting out an immigration narrative wherein the primary object of desire is not precisely defined, other than the act of immigration itself. The narrative has no need to explain, and does not explain, the reasons that everyone is so keen to get to the eponymous city--it's lacanian objet petit a. And it drives the prospective immigrants insane, despite the lack of definition, so much so that they police their own membership for "errata," to erase publication of the city in the waking world (119).

It's not a dystopian setting--the city of immigration is presented as more or less the same as the waking world, filled however with chimera and golems and other weirdnesses. There's a "banking district" and beggars (68), degrading manual labor (72-73), disabled veterans routinely humiliated (89), anti-immigrant fascist groups (167-68), people who "eat and starve" (137), people possess "weeping catamites" (153), there's pointless religious exercise (176), an aristocracy (272), poor everywhere, dictatorial governance, and so on. It is nevertheless presented as "so much more real" (244)--the hyperreal, more real than real, a stock conceit from baudrillardan analysis.

Overarching the fantasy setting is the history of war--it's presented obliquely--but the impression is that something horrible happened, and now the city has come to a tenuous settlement, which the protagonists' immigration will upset. Though the novel ends with some proclamations regarding the state of the war, it's not developed very much.

The best indication of what makes immigration so desirable that the protagonists suffer routine abuse, in comparison with which "incest hardly ranks" (121), and submit to sexual practices that are not desired even though consent is present, apart from the fact that the place of emigration is so horrible, is that "there, everything means something" (140). In contrast with the place of emigration, which is epitomized as "ruins of ruins, the city built on its own grave" (354), the place of immigration has a cemetary for signifiers (188), and is a place "without an etymology, without origin" (251), i.e., sans arche--the pristine state described by derridean linguistics, wherein the names of all things are "erased and rewritten many times" (305). We learn, ultimately, that "there is a hole at the center of Palimpsest" (341), the place literally decentered.

Perhaps the novel gives a bit too much credence to the philistine notion that sexual interaction with another renders one "a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange incomprehensible world of their interior filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign" (25-26). Can't see how any of that describes sex--but it does in fact describe very accurately the process of reading a challenging speculative fiction, such as this item--the reader stands on the edge of Bakhtin's svoi/chuzhoi distinction, attempting to gain access into the significance of the text, much like the characters attempt to immigrate to the city. It's work and involves some sacrifice, not least becoming palimpsest oneself, allowing one's own to be submitted sous rature, under erasure, to the force and effect of the langauge of the other, &c. &c. &c.

Some amusing moments that ridicule the conventions of heroic fantasy--such as when the protagonists conceive of themselves as knights on a quest (148, 195, 249, 252, 314), even though all they do is screw random strangers--it's not even quixotic--more plainly it's Sloterdijk's enlightened false consciousness. Another slick joke, at Mieville's expense, when the notion that a "train might one day become bold enough to jump its tracks [...] and escape Palimpsest altogether, into the wilds beyond and the mountains" is derided "as the worst sort of fancy" (320).

Valente's writing assumes that the reader is keeping up, usually, except in those several moments where she descends long enough to lay out the encyclopedia definition of the novel's title (290)--unnecessary, I think. Nifty contrast, though, with pecia, a concept likewise drawn from ancient manuscript culture and made manifest by the narrative, a metaphor turned into a fixture of the setting.

Recommended for practitioners of the art of bibliomancy, astrologers who just once happened to look down, and adamic, atavistic Edenites in the orgy of naming. ...more

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About Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente

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Catherynne M. Valente was born on Cinco de Mayo, 1979 in Seattle, WA, but grew up in in the wheatgrass paradise of Northern California. She graduated from high school at age 15, going on to UC San Diego and Edinburgh University, receiving her B.A. in Classics with an emphasis in Ancient Greek Linguistics. She then drifted away from her M.A. program and into a long residence in the concrete and cam ...more

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The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)

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The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Fairyland, #2)

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Quotes from Palimpsest

“Living alone,' November whispered, 'is a skill, like running long distance or programming old computers. You have to know parameters, protocols. You have to learn them so well that they become like a language: to have music always so that the silence doesn't overwhelm you, to perform your work exquisitely well so that your time is filled. You have to allow yourself to open up until you are the exact size of the place you live, no more or else you get restless. No less, or else you drown. There are rules; there are ways of being and not being.” — 122 likes

“To touch a person...to sleep with a person...is to become a pioneer," she whispered then, "a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to them.” — 46 likes

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