A Kitch Lit Series Tangent: Literary Lit

Robin Sloan is my current literary hero. Sloan’s writing style is all his own and I love it. The Kitch Lit Series recently featured Robin Sloan’s Sourdough, an entirely unique book that surprises and delights. After finishing Sourdough I eagerly devoured his debut novel Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. Mr. Penumbra’s is a book about the intersection of technology and the written word. And even though Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is not kitch lit, I had to write about it. My plea to read it will be brief because to reveal too much would be to ruin the pleasure of watching the story unfold.

Clay Jannon’s marketing job at yuppie bagel company NewBagel does not survive the recession and Clay finds himself poring over the classifieds. It turns out, “in a recession, people want good old-fashioned bubbly oblong bagels, not smooth alien-spaceship bagels.” When he happens upon Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, with a help wanted sign in the window, Clay is more than a little suspicious. But he is also curious. When Clay passes Mr. Penumbra’s not so subtle personality test, he is soon working the overnight shift. Mr. Penumbra has some very specific requirements for his employees. He requests Clay document the appearance and attitude of all customers. And when Clay notices that customers do not pay for the books, rather, they check them out, he begins to wonder about the story happening amongst people and the books in the bookstore. Who are these customers? Are they connected? Clay is determined to find out.

A colorful cast of characters surrounds Clay and populate what becomes an adventure to use science and technology to unlock the mystery of the bookstore. His artist friend and roommate Mat, who works at Industrial Light and Magic by day, spends his downtime constructing Matropolis, a sort of mini-city, throughout their rental. And then there’s Kat, Clay’s love interest and an over-achiever at Google, who has a penchant for the notion of immortality. And Neel, Clay’s childhood friend, who made his fortune creating a digital technology for the design of women’s breasts in video games, is still attracted to adventures and now has deep pockets to fund them. They are a motley crew, joined together with a common purpose. Not to mention Mr. Penumbra himself, an older man who carries himself with an air of both mystery and certainty. 

These characters become real because Sloan’s writing style has a vibrant, energetic quality. The dialogue is realistic. That is, if all of us had an extensive vocabulary and a penchant for artfully structured sentences. The story never lags. Exposition and descriptive passages can often feel burdened by the need to explain and move the plot forward, but in Sloan’s deft hands the story leaps from the pages. This is the first passage in the book:

                           Lost in the shadows of the shelves, I almost fall off the ladder. I am exactly halfway up. 

                           The floor of the bookstore is far below me, the surface of a planet I’ve left behind. The 

                           tops of the shelves look high above, and it’s dark up there – the books are packed in                                   close, and they don’t let any light through. The air might be thinner, too. I think
                           I see a bat. 

                          I am holding on for dear life, one hand on the ladder, the other on the lip of a shelf,                                     fingers pressed white. My eyes trace a line above my knuckles, search the spines                                         – and there, I spot it. The book I’m looking for. 

                          But let me back up.

The image Sloan creates is crisp, but it still allows the reader freedom to use his or her own imagination. The anticipation of discovery is palpable. It is impossible not to continue reading.  

Sloan skillfully crafts tales with intriguing characters, a plot that twists in all the right ways, and prose that reads so easily it belies the expertise between the lines. Read it.