Nylund, the Sarcophager by Joyelle McSweeney


Nylund, the Sarcophager
Title : Nylund, the Sarcophager
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0977901947
ISBN-10 : 9780977901944
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 124
Publication : First published January 1, 2007

Fiction. "If Vladimir Nabokov wanted to seduce Nancy Drew, he'd read her NYLUND, THE SARCOGRAPHER one dark afternoon over teacups of whiskey. Welcome to fiction's new femme fatale, Joyelle McSweeney."--Kate Bernheimer. "You thought you knew your own language. This book hands it back to you on a platter and includes the instructional manual for its further use."--Michael Martone. NYLUND, THE SARCOGRAPHER is a baroque noir. Its eponymous protagonist is a loner who tries to comprehend everything from the outside, like a sarcophagus, and with analogously ornate results. The method by which the book was written, and by which Nylund experiences the world, is thus called sarcography. Sarcography is like negative capability on steroids; this ultra-susceptibility entangles Nylund in both a murder plot and a plot regarding his missing sister, Daisy. As the murder plot places Nylund in increasing danger, his sensuous memories become more present than the present itself.

Nylund, the Sarcophager Reviews

  • Molly

    (3.5) "The muddy carpet had looked like the Seine at night, streaked with pinky muddy light from the sky, or like a rosebank after heavy rain, or the aftermath of an allmale garden party: kinky. Nylund had walked by the large department stores and seen small nodes of women emerge wearing hats as if guiding a flotilla of flowery islands down a river of Nereids' hair. The effect proved artificial like a Victorian night charade, each woman's head gleaming with a prow-shaped coif which bore up the sheaf of flowers. It was afternoon as Nylund watched this incredible current emerge and pull to a thread in both directions down the sidewalk, then then out completely and disappear." (17)

  • Joe

    Murder / incest (?) / Department stores / in some sort of noirish steampunkish past city--
    Has paired well w/thinking thru some writers on space/spaciality and "the body." Pathology(?) of Nylund makes him hyper alert to space, surface textures--reveals and revels in the unbearability of what we move thru, inhabit. The mass of detail, how it is vertiginous and sometimes intoxicating subverted my desire to assemble a linear narrative. Just lingered where I was invited to. Hurrah.

  • Cynthia Reeser

    Review here:
    http://www.prickofthespindle.com/revi...

  • Steve Owen

    crazy good. and sad.

  • P.S. We Are Better

    An audio discussion of NYLUND, THE SARCOGRAPHER with Sarah and Pablo D'Stair can be found at the following link to the literature discussion podcast "P.S. We Are Better Than You (random talk about random books)"


    http://pswearebetter.wordpress.com/episo...

    NOTE: The Three Star rating was chosen not as a reflection of opinion, but because we feel that it best represents the nuanced discussion. We do not really "do" star ratings :)