NP: Someone asked to report on The Kindly Ones

[Mark Kohut]

The narrator's voice on the page is immediately believable to me. Littell makes
him self-aware, conscious of his mental compromises, like....Celine's narrator perhaps,
in Journey To the End of the Night thinking of Littell's French upbringing. 
[His dad wrote good spy novels, btw] Or fill in your favorite 
self-aware monster-narrator---Richard III or Humbert Humbert and/or 
....not unlike Vond [although Vond's richness is still debatable] ? 

And, the tropes of many of our best books align: He runs a lace factory, with lots of
words about the dirty, obsessive, metallic two-step beat of the machines...(he won't go near them himself; too dirty)
they need lubricated but oil ruins the lace so graphite, a fine black powder, is used. Graphite!

on Blue as the color of sad modernity [see Vineland passim]: 
"the room is dark, the filthy windows are tinted blue, since lace is fragile and sensitive to light, 
and this bluish light soothes my mind".

Very Pynchonian images.