The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May is an American novel by writer Mark Z. Danielewski. Released on May 12, 2015, it is the first of a planned 27-volume story entitled The Familiar as well as the first book of Season 1, which includes The Familiar Volumes 1–5. This first volume takes place over the course of a single day: May 10, 2014. Its story weaves together nine different narratives from across the globe that continue to develop in subsequent volumes.
Themes and analysis Interconnectedness A repeating theme of this series is the oneness of all things and the many links between people throughout the world despite their differences. Danielewski's characters span multiple races, nationalities, and they speak a variety of languages, including Mexican Spanish, Egyptian Arabic, Armenian, Turkish, Singlish, Mandarin, and Russian. They are also from disparate places; in this first volume the main characters begin in Los Angeles, Marfa, El Tajín, and Singapore. But connections are already forming between them—for instance, Xanther has Tian Li's cat, Cas' friend Sorcerer knows Anwar and Xanther, and Isandòrno and Luther both work with Teyo. Many of the characters of The Familiar also hear the same strangely familiar sound: a cat's yowl.
Serialization and televisuality Danielewski has repeatedly expressed his desire to anchor his books in a relationship with a specific form of media. Where House Of Leaves was about a film and Only Revolutions was "about music," The Familiar "is about a television series". The number of volumes announced for The Familiar would then correspond to a whole television series. In a 2011 interview he declared having mapped out the first 10 books as "two 5-volume seasons". In that regard A Rainy Day in May has been described by critics as a "pilot episode".Robert J. Wiersema, The Globe and Mail ( Toronto). Among his references, Danielewski quotes the experience of "the five seasons of The Wire or the wild speculations of Battlestar Galactica" which are built upon multiple storylines: "these visual novels have come into our living rooms and bedrooms and they tell a story in much greater detail and with much greater patience." To him, the choice to remediate, within a series of books, the way "prestige" TV shows have shaped narratives, is "a longform investment in the future."
This description of modern TV shows as "visual novels" and of The Familiar as an ongoing televisual series albeit in the shape of a book, resonates in the typographic world of the book. Each volume of The Familiar opens with visuals that feed from its fictional universe, including the mini-series "Caged Hunt," a fully transcribed description of a video encased in the recognizable, YouTube-like frame of a digital player. The pervasive presence of television series as keystones of American mainstream culture, can also be felt in the numerous references to Battlestar Galactica as a common enjoyment of Anwar and his daughter Xanther, to be compared with the mentions and quotes from books and videogames, a modern mediatic panorama.
Writing process and collaboration In writing this series, which took over nine years to conceive, Danielewski "had to rely on individuals, on technologies, [and] on actual trips to places." People involved in the project include professors, grad students, researchers, computer programmers, graphic artists, translators, even Los Angeles detectives. He calls his closest group of collaborators "Atelier Z" (inspired by the French term atelier), but the number of people involved in work on The Familiar is much larger than that:
"Well, the Atelier Z itself is never more that two to five people; these are the core of people who are constantly working, who put an absurd amount of energy and love into it. And then if you check the back of any volume, you'll see that there's easily two dozen people that are involved, all over the world, in Turkey, in Spain, in France, in various places. So it's a global effort, where I frequently Skype with individuals, I go over the visuals or whatever they're doing."
Additionally, before the United States release of this first volume on May 12, 2015,The Familiar, Volume 1 on Amazon.com . Pantheon made advance copies available for classroom use, and university faculty and students in the United States and England participated in a cross-institutional reading of the novel. This group included University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Tennessee, Knoxville; De Montfort University; University of Notre Dame; University of California, Davis; Weber State University; and Clemson University.
Format Like Danielewski's other work, The Familiar has a very particular structure, and this first volume created the framework that each subsequent volume has followed thus far. Each volume contains: Exactly 880 pages divided into 30 chapters Front matter detail including two pages of advertisements from the world of The Familiar Three previews (akin to TV previews) in a section called, "New This Season" Five acts Five entr'actes One GC episode and one TMD episode A final dedication (akin to TV credits) A final sequence involving an animal The chapters have their own structure as well. Since there are nine different main characters that take turns narrating the story in the third person, each of the nine narratives is indicated with a different font and a different colored dog-ear in the corner of each page.
Main characters Xanther Ibrahim: a twelve-year-old girl in Los Angeles with epilepsy. Luther Perez: a Mexican-American gang member in Los Angeles. Anwar Ibrahim: Xanther's (step)father, a black Egyptian-American video game designer. Jingjing: a drug addict in Singapore who assists Tian Li, a healing woman. Astair Ibrahim: Xanther's mother, a PhD candidate and a therapist. Cas: a computer scientist in Marfa, Texas, also known as The Wizard. Özgür "Oz" Talat: a Turkish-American detective in the Murder Investigation Unit of the LAPD. Shnorhk Zildjian: an Armenian-American taxi driver in Los Angeles. Isandòrno: an existentialist in El Tajín, Mexico.
There are also the Narcons, beings who may or may not exist outside the narrative of the novel and provide commentary on it.
Plot summary
The novel takes place over the course of one day: May 10, 2014. The chapters are all bracketed by timestamps that indicate the exact moments when they begin and end. As the title indicates, on May 10 there was a torrential rain in the Los Angeles of the novel (May 10, 2014 was a cloudless day in Earth's Los Angeles).
Chapter 1: "Is Everything Okay?" [Xanther] Los Angeles, California. Xanther begins May 10 with her father Anwar knowing that at the end of the day he plans to give her a "big surprise" he and Astair have been planning for her. In the morning she and Anwar go to breakfast together, and in the car on the way she almost has a seizure while looking out into the rain, but she lies to Anwar about it for fear of worrying him. Instead she tells him she was daydreaming about her biological father, Dov.
Chapter 2: Lupita's [Luther] Los Angeles, California. Luther stands in the rain with a blanket over his head, looking for something or someone. Almoraz, a fellow gang-member, and Chitel, a younger boy, stand with him. Almoraz insults Luther and Luther headbutts him in the nose. From the doorway of the nearby house, Miz, a weathered member of the group, asks them if they're staying for breakfast. He's stirring his famous pancake batter. Miz also takes a look at Almoraz's nose. He gives it a tug and determines it's not broken. Lupita, the gang boss, tells Luther to stay for breakfast. She tells Luther to go with Chitel and his crew to sell in Glendale. When Luther resists, saying he's got his own work, she gets riled up, and in the process ends up in a coughing fit.
Chapter 3: Square One [Anwar] Los Angeles, California. Anwar and Xanther get breakfast at Square One Dining, a real restaurant in Los Angeles. She asks if she's late for her appointment with Dr. Potts, her therapist. Anwar says it's not until 10am. In his head, he notes that the "big surprise" isn't til 3pm in Venice. He also notes its cost: $20,000, which would be untenable if not for a $50,000 check that Ehtisham, his business partner, says he has in hand. As they eat, Xanther asks Anwar how game engines work. Anwar answers her with long explanations. She also asks if his co-workers Glasgow and Talbot will be at the meeting, will Mefisto as well? We learn that Mefisto is a fellow programmer and close friend of Anwar's, though they haven't seen each other in over a year. A few days prior, though, he had called out of the blue to warn the Ibrahim family of a prank for a web advertisement gone astray. The result was on onslaught of calls and messages at the Ibrahim house (what Anwar calls the "telephonic seizure"). When Anwar checks his phone now, his voicemail is full, he has 117 missed calls, and 2187 unread text messages. He can't even check his email accounts. Anwar's thoughts drift to a memory of Xanther standing in front of Dov's casket at the Arlington National Cemetery. Xanther notices and cuts the train off, "Now look who's thinking about Dov?" she says. "I miss him," Anwar admits. He thinks how it's odd how he and Dov (Xanther's biological father) managed to have a good relationship when his own courtship of Astair began when she was three months pregnant with Xanther. In the car driving from breakfast, Xanther asks about Dov. Where did he go after he died? Anwar answers with the best he can: he asks Xanther to remember the last time she saw Dov to demonstrate that he still lives on in her memory.
Chapter 4: zhong [Jingjing] Singapore. Jingjing's narrative, set in Singapore, is characterized by an almost phonetical rendition of Singlish, a creole language that is a mix of Malay, Hokkien Chinese and English, among other languages. Jingjing works for a healing woman, Tian Li, rumored to be a witch and the owner of a mysterious cat. Standing in a void deck Jingjing is listening to a group of strangers gossiping about his employer. Unwilling to openly discuss the cat's disturbing nature with strangers, he remembers that he once saw its shadow move while the cat remained still. However, he describes how the small animal rides on Tian Li's shoulder whenever she leaves the apartment complex. We are quickly introduced to Jingjing's fondness for collectible "monster cards" (each volume of the Familiar features one or more cards from his deck).
Jingjing recalls his first meeting with Tian Li, four years ago. The police had just arrested him in a park for drug use and she had convinced them to let him go. She had offered him a job if he swore to forsake his addiction. Life in her employ still leaves Jingjing unfulfilled, and he fantasizes about leaving Singapore. As he takes a walk in the rain, he finds Tian Li with a man kneeling down in front of her, he recognizes a billionaire named Zhong Sim Lin. He is asking for a favor and is ready to pay any amount of money in return. Jingjing is called in to play the role of a translator and Tian Li eventually accepts Zhong's request.
Chapter 5: Big Surprise [Astair]