NP _The Mount_

[pynchonoid]

This novel may interest some of you (the Web page has
links to the first two chapters),
from PW Daily 12 Dec 02:

[...]
Book of the Day: The Mount by Carol Emshwiller

The tiny Brooklyn one-man, one-woman operation, Small
Beer Press, has
published Carol Emshwiller's latest fabulist novel,
The Mount (Small
Beer, $16), to widespread acclaim. The Village Voice
Literary
Supplement just picked it as one its favorite books of
the year as did
Book Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Bookseller Paul Ingram
at Prairie Lights Bookstore can't stop talking about
The Mount,
saying, "It reminds me of Michel Faber's Under the
Skin. Nearly every
sentence is simultaneously hilarious, prophetic and
disturbing. This
person needs to be really, really famous. The Mount is
something very
special." PW Forecasts concurred, giving it a starred
review, which
said, "This poetic, funny and above all humane novel
deserves to be
read and cherished as a fundamental fable for our
material-minded
times."

Emswhiller is no newcomer. The 81-year-old writer has
been writing
since the 50s, when she was first compared with Samuel
Deluny. The
Mount is her eighth book after four collections of
stories and the
novels Ledoyt, Leaping Man Hill and Carmen Dog.

The novel is narrated by an adolescent boy, a "mount,"
who serves a
race of aliens--the Hoots--who arrived generations ago
on Earth and
took control of the planet. The boy, Charley, has been
bred from birth
to be the mount for the
future-supreme-ruler-of-us-all. He is happy
and dreams of becoming a famous racer. But when a
group of free
humans--the Wilds--descend from the hills and kill all
the Hoots, save
one, Charley's, he is forced make the first set of
adult decisions in
his life and deal with the consequences.

Essentially a coming of age novel, The Mount is also
"brilliantly
conceived and painfully acute in its delineation of
the complex
relationships between masters and slaves, pets and
owners, the served
and the serving," according to PW.

Emshwiller, a perfectionist, admits to writing slowly
and remains
sanguine about the recent attention. She told PW
Daily, "You can do
everything or nothing. You can be discovered and
rediscovered. I guess
what it teaches you is humility. I've always had a
devoted cult, but
right now I couldn't be more pleased."

A Web page dedicated to her work and showcasing
excerpts from her
books as well as interviews is online at 
http://www.lcrw.net/carolemshwiller/

Small Beer also publishes her collection of short
stories, Report to
the Men's Club and Other Stories, which can be sampled
here:
http://www.lcrw.net/carolemshwiller/stories/mrsjones.htm
--Edward
Nawotka [...]


-Doug




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