Small-sized reviews, raves, and recommendations.

Set in a strange city, part neo-noir, part avant-garde experiment, Morelia, by Renee Gladman follows the eponymous character on an adventure of dream and language. By turns violent and erotic and eerie, Morelia is on a dream-quest to discover the meaning of a sentence. Did she shoot a person? Did she not? Characters with names by Madame Mario and Mr. Otis float in and out of scenes as Morelia experiences alternate from reality to dream and back and forth again. She has to solve the mystery of the sentence, the sentence that starts with the word “Bze.” “The sentence wasn’t English but it was language nonetheless.” So the novel begins.

Morelia recalls the novels of Samuel Beckett, especially in the way language pulls the story forward, despite it lacking the formulaic beats of traditional narrative. The characters come across as ciphers, the dialogue weird and abstract, but a story nonetheless.

“Waking up is a question of right and wrong; but I don’t know who’s asking it, or where they have gone now that my eyes are open. It’s a deliberate undertaking, transitioning from sleep to wakefulness; it takes me an hour. I’ve decided I won’t rush it anymore, regardless of what the signs say. In fact, I won’t read the signs.”

With memorable imagery, an undercurrent of real and imagined violence, and unexplained, unresolved narrative tension, Morelia is a short, concentrated explosion of language and story, dream and sensation. It is a challenge to say what it is “about.” Or even if it is “about anything.” Perhaps there is a coherent through-line … or not. Sometimes stories can be enjoyed – even savored – on the power of language alone. Renee Gladman’s prose has that power. Understanding the storyline or “solving” the mystery about the sentence and Mr. Otis’s relationship to it aren’t necessary. Although, in true algorithmic fashion, this critic can’t help but attempt to compare Morelia to other works. Akin to the comics of Mark Beyer or early Ben Katchor, the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico or Edward Hopper, Eraserhead or Lost Highway, Morelia is just weird. Delightfully, enjoyably weird.