Product Description

Sam:
They were with us before Romeo & Juliet. And long after too. Because they’re forever around. Or so both claim, carolling gleefully:
We’re allways sixteen.
Sam & Hailey, powered by an ever-rotating fleet of cars, from Model T to Lincoln Continental, career from the Civil War to the Cold War, barrelling down through the Appalachians, up the Mississippi River, across the Badlands, finally cutting a nation in half as they try to outrace History itself.
By turns beguiling and gripping, finally worldwrecking, Only Revolutions is unlike anything ever published before, a remarkable feat of heart and intellect, moving us with the journey of two kids, perpetually of summer, perpetually sixteen, who give up everything except each other.

Hailey:
They were with us before Tristan & Isolde. And long after too. Because they’re forever around. Or so both claim, gleefully carolling:
We’re allways sixteen.
Hailey & Sam, powered by an ever-rotating fleet of cars, from Shelby Mustang to Sumover Linx, careen from the Civil Rights Movement to the Iraq War, tearing down to New Orleans, up the Mississippi River, across Montana, finally cutting a nation in half as they try to outrace History itself.
By turns enticing and exhilarating, finally breathtaking, Only Revolutions is unlike anything ever conceived before, a remarkable feat of heart and intellect, moving us with the journey of two kids, perpetually of summer, perpetually sixteen, who give up everything except each other.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #252370 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-12
• Released on: 2006-09-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780375421761
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Mark Danielewski's first novel House of Leaves is a cult-favorite--experimental horror fiction in a gorgeous (and newly remastered) full-color package. His new book Only Revolutions takes the experiment 10 steps further in a story about teenage lovers Hailey and Sam: the book is printed on two sides--one side tells the story from Hailey's point of view, flip it over and you get Sam's side (literally). We caught a glimpse inside the mind-bending new novel--take a look for yourself below.

Inside Only Revolutions

Hailey's Story	Covers	Sam's Story

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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A pastiche of Joyce and Beckett, with heapings of Derrida's Glas and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 thrown in for good measure, Danielewski's follow-up to House of Leaves is a similarly dizzying tour of the modernist and postmodernist heights—and a similarly impressive tour de force. It comprises two monologues, one by Sam and one by Hailey, both "Allmighty sixteen and freeeeee," each narrating the same road trip, or set of neo-globo-revolutionary events—or a revolution's end: "Everyone loves the Dream but I kill it." Figuring out what's happening is a big part of reading the book. The verse-riffs narrations, endlessly alliterative and punning (like Joyce) and playfully, bleakly existential (like Beckett), begin at opposite ends of the book, upside down from one another, with each page divided and shared. Each gets 180 words per page, but in type that gets smaller as they get closer to their ends (Glas was more haphazard), so they each gets exactly half a page only at the midway point of the book: page 180—or half of a revolution of 360 degrees. A time line of world events, from November 22, 1863 ("the abolition of slavery"), to January 19, 2063 (blank, like everything from January 18, 2006, on), runs down the side of every page. The page numbers, when riffled flip-book style, revolve. The book's design is a marvel, and as a feat of Pynchonesque puzzlebookdom, it's magnificent. The book's difficulty, though, carries a self-consciousness that Joyce & Co. decidedly lack, and the jury will be out on whether the tricks are of the for-art's-sake variety or more like a terrific video game. (Sept. 5)
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From The New Yorker
In his new novel, the author of "House of Leaves" is up to his old tricks—multicolored and upside-down text—and some flabbergasting new ones, including a double-ended structure that obliges the reader to flip the book every eight pages. (Two place-holding ribbons are provided.) The plot involves a pair of teen-agers, Sam and Hailey, who narrate alternating accounts of a freewheeling adventure through America. Their main activity seems to be having sex in a car, though the language leaves room for doubt: "I pop lobgobs of orifice missing / globblobs, swiggling thrushrushed," says Sam. Some of the calmer passages show real talent, but there is little payoff. After all the wishfully Joycean compounds, Whitman-derived versifying, and opportunities for losing one's place (the ribbons slip off the page as easily as the gobbledygook slips from the mind), one ends up asking, with Sam, "Why for?"
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