Interviews and Reviews

For The Orphan's Tales

The opening volume of the Orphan's Tales begins in a palace garden, where a girl has been abandoned because of the strange, ink-black stain around her eyes and over her eyelids. Because the sultan and his nobles wish to avoid the problem she presents, she is left to wander the gardens, alone until another child, a boy, comes and speaks to her. She reveals the secret of her ink-stained eyes, that they contain many tales. In return for the boy's company, she tells him stories, beginning with the tale of the prince Leander. Each succeeding story grows from the one before it, characters recounting tales they were told and even weaving them back together. There is an entire mythology in this book, in which the themes of familiar fairy tales are picked apart and rearranged into a new and wonderful whole. The narrative is a nested, many-faceted thing, ever circling back to the girl in the palace garden and the prince she is telling the tales to in a wonderful interpretation of what fairy tales ought to be. The illustrations by Michael Kaluta constitute an excellent supplement, reminiscent of illustrations of such fairy-tale books as Andrew Lang's, though Kaluta does no toning down for Victorian sensibilities.

--Booklist, Oct. 15th, Starred Review

A tale of revenge, magic and family.

Valente's publisher compares this book to Arabian Nights, and that comparison is hardly hyperbole. An exotic and unnamed young lady with tattoos around her eyelids has been exiled to the garden of a palace, existing on the scraps and fruits left to her by the rest of the court, who shun her for her mysteriousness. But one unnamed boy is brave enough to talk to her, and she begins to tell him a fairy tale about a young Prince who kills a goose. Only the day is finished before the story is done, and the unnamed boy must return to hear the rest of the tale. From this story emerges another, and then another... As time progresses, the young boy risks the antipathy of the rest of the court to continue listening to this interweaving story of magic, adventure, quests and murders, handed down through generations of women.

A work of beautifully relayed, interlinked fairy tales.

--Kirkus, Aug. 1st, Starred Review.

A lonely girl with a dark tattoo across her eyelids made up of words spelling out countless tales unfolds a fabulous, recursive Arabian Nights-style narrative of stories within stories in this first of a new fantasy series from Valente (The Grass-Cutting Sword). The fantastic tales involve creation myths, shape-changing creatures, true love sought and thwarted, theorems of princely behavior, patricide, sea monsters, kindness and cruelty. As a sainted priestess explains, stories "are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words," and this volume does not so much arrive at a conclusion but stops abruptly, leaving room for endless sequels. Each descriptive phrase and story blossoms into another, creating a lush, hallucinogenic effect.

--Publisher's Weekly

A young girl lives in the palace garden, an outcast because of the strange inky tattoos around her eyes. These markings hold entire stories of enchanted beasts, magical horses, wizards, and other magnificent and mysterious beings, part of an intricately woven tapestry of tales that make up the history of the exiled girl. When a young prince convinces the girl to tell him one of her stories, he begins a journey that will bring him a little closer to a great mystery. Valente's lyrical prose and masterful storytelling brings to life a fabulous world, solidifies Valente's (Yume No Hun; The Labryinth) place at the forefront of imaginative storytelling, and belongs in libraries of all sizes.

--Library Journal, Starred Review

Lyrical, witchy... mixes feminist grit with pixie dust.

--Entertainment Weekly

Catherynne M. Valente's first three novels earned her a reputation as a bold, skillful writer. Her latest, The Orphan's Tales, reaffirms that early acclaim... These are fairy tales that bite and bleed. Every moment of lyricism is countered by one of clear-eyed honesty, and sometimes the moments combine, as in the tale of the monstrous Leucrotta: "For witches, there is but one King and one Palace -- the one who has wronged them, and the house in which he lives."

A welcome humor also pervades the book, helping imbue it with a sense of larger perspective while still allowing each persona a distinct voice. Says one of Sigrid's followers, "Stories are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words." Now we wait for Valente to bend her knee again and make more myths.

--Washington Post

The women here are earthy, ugly, lonely, beautiful, and often isolated; the mothers are frequently evil, the stepmothers often good; the villains of one piece deserve pity when approached from a different teller�s tale, and in some cases, the warranted actions of one set of story heroes affect another set, unknown to them, in the worst possible ways. The underlying myths of creation are elegant, and although they come stretched from whole, new cloth, they have an edge to them that makes them more real than tropes which are more familiar.

--Fantasy and Science Fiction

The movement is inward, then outward again, then inward, from the depths to the surface and back again, in a cyclical pattern appropriately reminiscent of sleep rhythms or the stitches that make up a tapestry. This structure works beautifully to build suspense and layer complexity into the novel. Very early it becomes apparent that each of the tales related by Valente's characters, of pirates, monsters, shape-shifters, and living stars, is a facet of a bigger tale: a tale too large for a single volume to contain.

Just as extraordinary as the unflagging yet never grasping inventiveness that distinguishes these pages, and which holds not only for the individual stories but the vast mythos that slowly emerges into view, underpinning and overarching them, is the degree to which Valente succeeds in grounding her flights of fancy in characters�some human, some not�that we come to know and care deeply about.

--Realms of Fantasy

The reader is thus guided through a wondrous land of interconnected stories, so that reading becomes an experience similar to that of a swimmer who descends from the surface of the sea to explore a drowned city, exploring the buildings and palaces within the city and then the rooms within the palaces, and, from these rooms, going through doorways that lead to still more places to be discovered. It is a little disorienting, and the reader might sometimes get lost and wonder just where this particular story is within the larger structure-but the stories and their interconnections stay surprisingly lucid, and the act of reading becomes an adventure in itself... Scheherazade has learned a few new tricks.

--Strange Horizons

In short, In the Night Garden is downright folk-funky, with DJ Cat V scratching and mixing myth and lore with an original blend given previously untold life by a writer who ultimately made me ponder the question of what happens when a neverending story ends, while almost making me forget to ask about the power in the name of the teller. The Orphan's Tales is the poet, short fiction writer, and novelist maximizing her entire skill set in an offering that caters to the sensibilities of the fan of all forms.

--Fantasy Book Spot

Every tale told by the narrator brims with the stuff of life. At turns poetic, sumptuous, beguiling and numinous, the tales are interspersed by sly glimpses of the growing relationship between the storyteller and her prince. The overall effect is to make reading In the Night Garden as close to a genuinely magical experience as it's possible to get, and elevates the work above most other contemporary fantasy. One day in the not too distant future, it could easily come to be regarded as a literary classic. Savvy school librarians should add it to their lists right now. Cover to cover, this is an astonishing work which reinterprets and redefines the definition of a modern classic fairytale.

--SF Site Featured Review

Valente's prose is creative and sophisticated; her imagery is intricate and arresting. Her skill is the treasure that allows this textual matryoshka to work. Each individual story is polished and utterly absorbing- a world unto itself, from which the reader is pulled away too soon. Yet the author immediately sweeps into the delights of another new character, new puzzle, new danger. One moment the reader is enraptured with a battle between a leucrotta and a shape-shifting bear, the next moment, empathizing with an outcast sorceress, and the next, mourning the fall of a race of wild horses. This extraction and re-immersion happens so completely, so frequently, that after a while the reader reaches a Zen-like state, bobbing along the narrative sea like driftwood, though not nearly so detached. Some tales had me laughing out loud, some tapped a deep well of happiness, and at least one left me with such a lingering sense of horror that I could not pick the book up again for days. I should note here that this is not a book of fairytales for children; it is often dark and sometimes unflinchingly violent. However, it is frequently marked by a transcendent beauty as well.

Any lover of well-written fantasy will find much to enjoy about Valente's book, for the dozens of diverse and extraordinary tales in the volume share magic as their binding factor. And like an impossible mystery that one can never untangle before the denouement, patterns and protagonists from all through the book do mesh like puzzle pieces by the Tales' end. Valente's philosophy on the unusual structure of the novel seemingly peeks through when a sainted pirate remarks, "Stories ... are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words." Reverence is a key theme cutting across all the winding pathways of story in the book, reverence for language, for spirituality, for nature, for friendship, sacrifice, determination, and for the wonder in the world that can't be explained away.

--Green Man Review (Best Mythopoeic Work of 2006)

What Valente has accomplished in this book is far more than a collection of stories; she has sown the seeds of an entire mythos, all her own. The blooms in her night garden dazzle and bewitch, and are wondrous fair.

--SFRevu

This is a work full of color, depth and enchantment, a veritable feast of enthralling stories that just make you want to read one more. Not only are these fascinating tales, but the writing is beautiful, with a lyric feel that adds luster to each work. How can you not want to read about the man who dressed in the moon or a pumpkin tree? The experience is made all the richer by the wonderfully detailed illustrations by Michael Kaluta, giving us a glimpse of the Marsh King or the head of the Black Papess. I enthusiastically recommend this book and am looking forward to the next volume: join me In the Night Garden and see what wonders it holds.

--Fast Forward Book Review

For The Grass-Cutting Sword

Valente's latest is a rich, delicious, atmospheric "trickster" novel set in a mythic version of ancient Japan. Valente is one of the most intriguing young writers working in the mythic fiction field today. Her work is lyrical, unusual, ambitious, and deeply rooted in world mythology.

--Terri Windling

Through her signature, sensual blend of prose and poetry, classical and contemporary references, Valente tells a tight and angry tale of mothers, lovers, siblings, and monsters, as well as the most basic of desires that bind them...though steeped in a literary tradition unfamiliar to many western readers, the world of The Grass-Cutting Sword is accessible to both the seasoned aficionado of Shinto myth and the novice simply looking for a good read. It is recommended not only to fantasy readers with an interest in world myth but also to anyone who finds the eternal struggle between parents and children, husbands and wives, communities and individuals, the stuff of good writing.

--The Pedestal Magazine

The Grass-Cutting Sword is intricately constructed and stylishly told...As a portrait of despair, The Grass-Cutting Sword out-Lears Lear

--Strange Horizons

For The Descent of Inanna

Faced with material like this, what Valente has done is try to transform the story into something that retains the spirit of the original but is rather more in tune with modern sensibilities. She keeps much of the repetitive nature of the original, but at the same time she freely uses modern terms and idioms where they add to the text. One of my favorite parts of her adaptation is the section in which Inanna is trying to persuade Neti, gatekeeper of the underworld, to let her in.

--Emerald City

Valente's version is superb, a wonderfully rich-as-the-earth reshaping of the poem.

--Hal Duncan, Author of Vellum

A weaving of words and worlds worth venturing to the underworld and back to see complete.

--The Bodhisattva

For Apocrypha

Apocrypha is Catherynne M. Valente's first full-length poetry collection, though obviously not her first publication, and she presents wicked stepmothers, Greek heroes, witches, and bodhisattvas through brilliant, evocative language.

Valente leaves no style of myth untouched, from ancient Greek stories to modernized fairy tales, all told with passion--rage, violence, desire all combine into characters, into women unafraid of their sexuality or their power...Apocrypha is inaptly named; this is no work of dubious authenticity, but the veil drawn back from the world of the reader. Once soft edges are sharp and dangerous, words become weapons to make thoughts bleed and purge the gentle lies which cover desperate need and the power inherent in fear.

--Inside Pulse

Like her novels, The Labyrinth and Yume no Hon, Apocrypha--Catherynne M. Valente's first full-length poetry collection--contains sensuous word play, tantalizing eroticism and a kaleidoscopic journey in which the mythological becomes the personal. Like her previous efforts, it's also an exquisite piece of poetry and storytelling bound under the same cover...Nowhere is this more true than in "Z", the long, enigmatic prose poem which closes the volume. Like a more lavish and coherent version of Kenneth Koch's "When the Sun Tries to Go On", "Z" seems to incorporate everything in the story of a dictionary which, figuratively speaking, ploughs through the reader's body to impregnate it with the penultimate letter...An engrossing collection, Apocrypha is a must for any fan of Valente's work and any lover of the strange and visceral.

--Star*Line

In language stark and intricate by turns, always unflinching, Catherynne M. Valente peels back the skin of the everyday to reveal the mythscape resonant beneath such disparate actions as crab fishing, cutting a peach, and catching a train�the epic, abcedarian "Z," in which the letters of the alphabet chart the ouroboros relationship of writer and reader, has sheerly no precedent. (Prepare to be devoured.) After two novels and a chapbook, Apocrypha is Catherynne M. Valente's first full-length poetry collection. One can only wonder where her passionate and personal vision will take her next.

--Sonya Taaffe

Catherynne Valente's ambitious, impassioned poems plunge with headlong energy through western legend and Japanese fairytale, myth and madness, sin and suffering, the alphabet and the biblical apocrypha, never flinching at rage, violence, desire, or dread. As it name suggests, Apocrypha is a book of wonders.

--Sandra M. Gilbert

For Oracles

I recommend this to fans of poetry, classical or modern, as well as those interested in the rewriting of historical tales and characters. These Oracles are modern and cross familiar ground; they cover the United States, inexorably follow our historical trails to the west, and guide the reader on a journey, perhaps one of discovery, perhaps one of simply seeing cities, and these fortune tellers, with new eyes.

--Inside Pulse

I predict that her poetry chapbook ORACLES will become a classic of the American 21st century.

--Vera Nazarian

For Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams:

Though her epic novels have won praise from critics and readers alike, Catherynne M. Valente is still one of contemporary literature's best-kept secrets But Yume no Hon is more than a clever deconstruction of myth and history. It is a poignant story of an old woman's isolation and her longing for security and comfort in old age when she, like everyone, attempts to make sense out of the inexplicable thoughts, feelings and experiences that have defined her life. It is her humanity her fondness for tea and mustard grass, her love of riddles and learning, her affection for the village children who visit her, that make her a truly compelling character. Valente's greatest triumph lies more in the creation of this woman, who lives and breaths just as surely as the legends who define her, than in any beautiful turn of phrase or metaphor. Told with mathematical precision and the subtle beauty of a well-structured haiku, Yume no Hon is a book not to be missed.

--Reflection's Edge

Its a lovely book. I intend to read it many times.

--Realms of Fantasy

It's hard to describe this short novel without falling into a kind of "elevated" language that misses its more down-to-earth qualities. They may come through better if I just cite some of the chapter headings, derived from the Japanese calendar (Heian period): "Sparrows Sing"; "Earthworms Come Out"; "Waters Dry Up". And, moving into metaphor: '"Thunder Suppresses His Voice"; "Heaven and Earth Turn Strict". Valente can write with the same radical simplicity, so the narrator experiences self-doubt while harvesting beans or pulling weeds, and whether she gazes at mountain tops, moves through ancient battlefields, or dreams strange dreams, the bean field and the weed patch are rarely far away. Even when things move further into a mystic zone where differing myths and religions start to come together, the humbler spirit of legends, folklore and old wives' tales undercuts the Sublime.

The Book of Dreams has room enough for beauty, awe, and terror, but its roots are primal - basic as the seasons, with their cycles of life and death.

--Locus Reviews

Ayako may be a goddess or a dream or a leonine monster but, by the end, much wisdom has been learned. Those who admire literary craft and rich language will most appreciate this sublime tale.

--Publisher's Weekly

Gorgeous, liquid prose...it is short, it is intense, and when you get to the end you are left with the strange feeling that you have somehow read something that is True.

--Cheryl Morgan
Emerald City

The Dragon Page XM radio interview by Evo Terra, Summer Brooks, and Michael R. Mennenga.

Listen.

Valentes poetic prose is extremely unique, and her portrayal of Japanese culture is sometimes even enlightening. The meditative feel one gets while reading this novel is peaceful and calm; the heartbeat slows with each word, each sentence strung together, each paragraph a poem in and of itself.

--Simon Owens
LitHaven

For The Labyrinth:

The Labyrinth is very much like a classical music piece. Starting softly it sings to the soul, is filled with complexity and poise, reaches a startling crescendo, and then leaves the body luxuriously stirred for quite some time. While the characters seem offbeat at first you may find they represent the very events, things and people that surround us all. The author's sheer use of creativity is what makes the whole story work and in a manner that deserves attention as well as applause. This is original, and a beautiful direction for literature to take. Think mystic, Shakespeare, fables, and allow the gentle escape into a multi-faceted world.

--The Midwest Book Review

Extended work of prose poetry in essence. Often brilliant but too relentlessly obscure and personal to succeed as long form prose. Extremely palatable when approached a few pages at a time. If Valente ever manages to calm down a bit, she might turn out to be a historically great prose writer.

--The Absinthe Literary Review

Quite the most startling book of 2004, though possibly way too poetic for everyones taste, is Catherynne M. Valentes wonderful tale inspired by Greek myths.

--Emerald City Best of 2004 List

Line by line and page by page, The Labyrinth contains more beauty than all but a very few books published this year. Each paragraph is an incantation, and the entirety is less novel than dithyramb, less story than dream.

--Matt Cheney
SFsite.com

If I could not actually speak it, then I would pronounce each word in my head, just like a child learning to read, because without speaking the words I would not hear their rhythm. Valentes writing reminded me very much of Dylan Thomas. There is a lyrical quality to it that demands that it be performed, not just read.

--Cheryl Morgan
Emerald City #112

I realize it's a book that will appeal to a small audience, one willing to be entranced by language, but I have found since reading it that much of the book has stuck with me more vividly than many, many other things I read this year.
--Matt Cheney The Mumpsimus

Read Jeff Vandermeer force Catherynne to Justify Herself.

From The Pedestal Magazine:

Valente's grasp of language and myth is masterful, and her understanding of human psychology profound. As writer Jeff Vandermeer so pointedly put it in the book's introduction, The Labyrinth is a 'small jewel of a novel." Like any treasured stone, it is worthy of only the finest place on a reader's bookshelf.

--JoSelle Vanderhooft
Read the full review.

Listen to CMV's NPR interview here!

Interview at Fantastic Metropolis here.

From Horseless Press:

Suspend judgment when beginning this novel: the swelling of gorgeous language and imagery initially leads one to wonder whether it has a backbone. It does, though no center or end. Resemblences to Carroll and Dante, but utterly unique unto itself. A quest-that-is-not.

From Publisher's Weekly:

"The author's poetic prose simmers with paraphrases from Blake, Milton, Shakespeare and other literary heavyweights, and this often gives her descriptions stimulating depth and richness...readers who luxuriate in the telling of a tale and savor phrases where every word has significance will enjoy the challenge of this fantasy."

Valente's Labyrinth is a feverish, furious painting of existence; of life-death-rebirth-life. Atman and Anatman, the self and the no-self, walk the endless roads of the maze, finding each other for a time before the endless wheel pulls them once again apart. There are paths upon paths upon paths, and doors to doors to doors. How you choose to interpret them, and which you would choose given the infinite possibilities, are for you to decide. Everyone's Labyrinth is truly their own....it offers the sort of fiery originality I�ve been looking for.

--Cracked Covers

Read Jeff Vandermeer's introduction here .

The Agony Column:

This is not your father's or your mother's Jorge Luis Borges.

If you live in Northern/Central California, tune in to 88.9 KUSP in September to hear Catherynne's NPR interview with Rick Kleffel. Read his expanded review of The Labyrinth.

For Music of a Proto-Suicide:

She's brash, maybe even brazen. Talent can do that to a writer. Catherynne M. Valente can treat words, in more than a few languages, like dangerous toys. Her poems tell stories that lurk far enough, carefully and quietly, beneath the surface, that it�s amazing she�s so prolific. One can only hope that she's been meaning to tell these stories from the get-go. Seriously, the amount of bobbing and weaving work coming from Valente is epic... what makes it interesting is that no one is doing, or perhaps is able to do, anything like it.

--Spiderwords Reviews

Valente's poetry gleams and churns in this slim chapbook. Intense, visceral, bursting with image.

--The Absinthe Literary Review

We all have our individual ideas about Sappho, but my vision of her, reincarnated into the American 21st century, is Catherynne M. Valente. Her poems embody centuries of passionate lyricism. Read her, and visit the oracle of poetry.
- Diane Wakoski

...each poem stands on its own, apart from the others, becoming an esoteric tangle of fugue sequences in which the reader finds him- or herself daunted, overwhelmed and eventually discarded, wondering breathlessly what has happened, recalling the taste of Valente's lilting language on the tongue but unable to fully place it. A commendable effort and a unique reading experience in which the expected is never fully there and in which what is offered is magical and utterly original.

--Kris T. Kahn, author of Arguin with the Troubadour

The collection is reminiscent of Blake's Urizen and his journey through the cycle of life, in fact, but where Blake sought a rebirth, it seems Valente almost craves to be undone, to dissolve completely... The magic of this collection is that it respects no Cartesian boundaries. What begins in the intellect is quickly absorbed into the body. This is a visceral work that cuts through thought, skin, marrow, and soul and settles in the womb. There is a very strong sense of the poet in the collection that sears through the reader and opens them up like a near-death experience. It is a book to read in one hour or over and over again throughout a lifetime. These paths will never be fully mapped and the words will never cease to cut right through the heart.
--Anaiis Flox, Still Life Reviews

[MOAPS] contains some of the most amazing imagery I've ever encountered in one place...this is the best book of poetry I have read in a very long time, and one of the few that I've read that caused me to think when I walked away.
--Kara Hash, Simegen.com

One finishes Valente's poems feeling as if you've seen her naked, throat bared and hip bone exposed, and every sly rereading makes one blush... the strength of this volume comes from the immediate and violent connection between Valente and the reader: even her most exultant pieces convey intense observation bordering on pain, and one can't help but capitulate. This chapbook is destined to be a collectors item.
--Audra Friend, Kiss the Muse: Intimate Reviews

From Readers:

On Music of a Proto-Suicide:

The author is not afraid to dissect herself, aware of all aspects, of the ugly as well as the beautiful. Her language is honest, probing, but not bleak...Music of a Proto-Suicide, despite the last word in its title, is a book about the experience of being alive. It is intellectual, down to earth, erotic, even at times horrific. These poems are life lived to its fullest rendered on the printed page for the reader to devour. These poems are elegantly crafted but immediate, in your face, real. If you seek a new experience in poetry, a different spin on literature and life, look no further. The wonder is here.
--Michelle Castle

On The Labyrinth:

From the very beginning I fell in love and felt my feet moving in time to a journey through madness and mazes. There is much to be said for a novel of such oration as The Labyrinth. A monologue of sorts that graces the eyes of a world full of the fantastical and yet never leaves the mind of the teller and the reader. A world of Carroll-like charms, of falling downdowndown. A syphilitic Alice, if Alice had eaten the Mad Hatter instead of having tea with him. A world of doors that hunt, velveteen Hares and meaningful lobsters...If you havent read it, do so. It will leave you breathless. This story took me to places I had never even dreamed about, and then I read it and it was all I dreamt about. The road goes ever onward, and I walked for miles in my sleep, running from doors, talking to monkeys and checking to see if my skin had changed hue. It is in all honesty one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read.
--Beth Bowerman