The Fifty Year Sword is the latest novel by author Mark Z. Danielewski. Danielewski is an author who's books would fit better on a wall in MoMA rather than on the shelf of your local book store. His debut work, House of Leaves is one of the most original novels I have ever read. It is enigmatic in approach and chilling in execution. The book still haunts me to this day and gives me chills whenever I think about it.
Thinking that people understood his work too much, Danieleswski followed up with his second book, Of Revolutions, which is almost a novel in name only. Composed in a very confusing free verse style, Of Revolutions tells a love story from two different perspectives and from two literal ends of the book. Readers are encouraged to turn the book upside down every seven pages and read from a new side to complete the full story. Similar to House of Leaves, colored text is an important facet to fleshing out the work, but it's the complicated narrative, filled with symbolic language, that makes this book too difficult for even his most ardent fans.
Now, six years after later, we have Danielewski's third novel, The Fifty Year Sword. Seeming to be more straightforward than the last book, The Fifty Year Sword is about a seamstress who comes to be the caretaker of five orphans. Its theme involves sewing and the ability to stitch things together. This is represented in the cover art below the dust jacket and must be seen for yourself. I will always applaud Danielewki for being an author who brings many visual elements to his stories. Color, again, plays a role where different speakers have different colored quotations marks making William Faulkner roll in his grave with jealousy.
This is a very big release and makes me excited to see it in stores. Find it at your local bookseller or online here.
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