"e;Butler is an original force who is fearless with form....[an] inventive and deeply promising young author."e; Time Out New York"e;[Butler's] sentences...twist and evolve, and there's a perverse joy that comes from watching just how his paragraphs are shaped, of tracing their contractions and rhythms."e; FlavorpillWith echoes of Justin Taylor, Tony ONeill, and Dennis Cooper, breakout novelist Blake Butler delivers a wildly inventive, impressionistic novel of family, sickness, and the wrenching birth of art. Evocative of Mark Z. Danielewskis House of Leaves and the films of David Lynch, There Is No Year offers a fractured, dystopian parable about the struggle and survival of art, identity, and family. As the Toronto Globe and Mail says, if the distortion and feedback of Butler's intense riffing is too loud, you may very well be too boring.
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.