Sum Tyms Bytin Sum Tyms Bit: "Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban
"People ask me how I got from St. Eustace to Riddley Walker and all I can say is that it's a matter of being friends with your head. Things come into the mind and wait to hook up with other things; there are places that can heighten your responses, and if you let your head go its own way it might, with luck, make interesting connections."
in "Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban
The language is what makes this book, working at multiple levels. For a start, it gives the reader an instant sense of estrangement, telling us from the first line, at a gut level, that we are in a world very different from ours. Then, as Hoban has said, the difficulty of reading it slows the reader down to Riddley's own speed, and it makes you read unusually carefully.
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