Then I was in the offices of Pantheon, talking with Andy Hughes about various production details-and he started talking about Here. I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me all about it, but I was in the middle of something and promptly forgot the conversation and went about on my merry way. I got a text from Gus Van Sant asking me if I’d read this book.

Then Here, the book version, was published, and I started to hear from friends. Oh, that’s an interesting idea: being, as a reader, localized in one place and yet accelerating through an enormous amount of time. I remember filing it away in my mind somewhere. After I published my Only Revolutions-which features two teenagers moving through two hundred years of time-people kept mentioning this 1988 strip by Richard McGuire. Danielewski: Here is one of those books that just kept murmuring to me in the background. He lives in Los Angeles and spoke to me by phone. But as the narration stretches from Los Angeles to Singapore to Venice, Italy, there’s something else at stake: Danielewski wants to show the awesome, terrifying scale of a single earthly day.ĭanielewski’s previous novel, Only Revolutions, was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award. On the surface, the plot is simple-an epileptic 12-year-old named Xanther goes to buy a family pet and comes home with a creature we suspect is very dangerous. And Narcons-a fleet of artificially intelligent robots that serve as the book’s “objective” narrative device-butt in with factual asides.

There are nine narrators, each with a unique font and color-coded quick-reference tab. Throughout, Danielewski blurs the line between text and image, with full-spread illustrations made up of tiny letters. The book is a visual feast, and no two pages look alike. There’s a Perfect Number of Days to Work From Home, and It’s 2 Amanda Mullĭanielewski’s latest project is a whopping, 27-volume series called The Familiar, of which the first volume, One Rainy Day in May, comes out Tuesday.