The story of Cas, a hacker type who is on the lam when we meet her, is told in such a way that its text (and the negative space it creates) forms a circle on the page, a constant reminder of the mysterious electrical orb she carries with her. For example, the story of an LAPD detective is told with half-empty pages that resemble police paperwork. The narratives occupy chapters with pages that are color-coded in the corners, and each character's story is presented in a unique style. Three of those nine characters belong to the same family and serve as de facto main characters: the mother (Astair), the father (Anwar), and their daughter (Xanther, the 12-year-old girl). In the first volume, Danielewski tells the story of 'one rainy day in May' (this volume's subtitle) from the perspective of nine different characters around the globe. Released last month, the first volume of The Familiar is, in many ways, exactly what it had always been rumored to be: a 'story about a 12-year-old girl who finds a kitten.' In truth, it's much more than that, because the story of The Familiar will be told over 27 volumes.

Neither is his next one - or, more accurately, ones. If you're looking for a light summer read, these books are not for you. Danielewski followed that with The Fifty Year Sword, which bounced between five narrators. Its 'hook' was that it told both characters' accounts concurrently on the opposite sides of a given page, and you had to flip the book every eight pages to keep things straight.

His follow-up, Only Revolutions, was a road novel of sorts that followed a traveling teenage couple. That book, written by Mark Danielewski, wove multiple narratives, hundreds of footnotes, and detailed appendices into a layout as dizzying as the haunted, shape-shifting house that House of Leaves was about. It's been more than a decade, but I can still remember the nightmares that haunted me while I read House of Leaves: the long, dark hallways that stretched to infinity trap floors that dropped me into labyrinthine chasms that would make MC Escher tremble.

Mark danielewski