Valente, Catherynne: The Labyrinth
The Labyrinth
Writer: Catherynne M. Valente
Genre: Fiction/Fantasy
Pages: 181
I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while, but I never got around to it, cause I kept hoping it would be released in trade. It never was, and I was content to wait, until I met Catherynne Valente at Context19. She had copies of all her books, and I figured if I was ever going to get this, I might as well buy it from the author and get it signed too.
I knew going into this that her style was unique, poetic. But I wasn’t prepared for just how much poetry fueled this novel. It took me a while to work my way through the poetry and all its metaphor and symbolism, but once I got into the rhythm, I was immersed. It’s hard to say where that point was, but I think it came after Seeker-After’s encounter with the crocodile, then the lobster. After that, the language started clicking, and I was able to separate the metaphor from the literal, and to understand a little more of the symbolism.
The interesting thing about this book is that, as mentioned in the introduction, the language intricately linked to the setting. And the setting? All you need to know is the title of the book: Labyrinth. You don’t get eased into the situation, you’re there, and you’re wandering with the narrator who doesn’t care to make sense out of what’s going on, until she’s forced to.
There’s a lot to ponder in this book. Symbols, allegory…there’s just so much. Valente’s prose and lyricism reminded me very much of Justine Robson’s in Living Next Door to the God of Love, but in Labyrinth, the metaphor made sense, even when it was literal (such as devouring something). This reads very much like a long prose poem, and there’s much to enjoy. It’s not a traditional narrative or story by any means: the reader is meant to work for this story. But the language here is key: this is what grounds the reader to what’s going on in the narrative, what pulls the reader along. The language is gorgeous.
The sense of fairy-tale, of mythology, is heavy in this book. And religion, spirituality seeps through as well. The Monkey was one of my favorite characters, and the crocodile cracked me the hell up with his sermon (A MAN! WALKS INTO! A BAR!), which seemed so nonsensical at first, but was explored deeply through-out the course of the book. And that’s something to remember: what seems random and nonsensical truly has deeper meaning by the end of it. Do I understand it all? Hardly. It’s something to reconsider and ponder and re-read, and trust me when I say the book lends itself to a re-read.
While the language is rich and poetic, I wouldn’t recommend this particular title to just any fantasy reader. Instead, I’d recommend it to any reader who has a love of poetic language, a love of metaphor. It’s hardly a fantasy so much as it is a myth, a fairy-tale (which is a fantasy in some regards, but not traditional). The chapters are short and grouped together in Cantos (see? Big!Long!Prose!Poem!). This is something I’d recommend to lovers of myth and fairytale, philosophy and metaphor, and most important, lovers of language. You can’t help but feel a little smarter, more enlightened, after reading this.
I definitely plan on reading more of Valente’s work, particularly her latest release. It’ll be interesting to compare her other books to this, especially the style and use of language. And I’d really love to hear her read The Labyrinth out loud. As with anything poetic, one feels as though they’re missing something while reading it silently. This book demands to be heard.
And an aside: this book also begs to be a painted narrative by someone as surreal and talented as Dave McKean. Everything from the Labyrinth itself to the chameleon colors of the narrator…I’d love to see what an artist like him could do with this book.