Palimpsest

I've liked most everything I've read by Catherine Valente, but not so much with Palimpset.  In general, I like her poetic language and willingness to play with the boundaries of fiction, whether with the story-in-a-story concept of Orphan's Tales or the thicket of confusion that was Yume no Hon.  But Palimpset is relatively straightforward as a novel, and that's its downfall.

Valente wants to wander around her city of Palimpsest more than she wants to tell a story.  The shortness of the individual stories in Orphan's Tales or Yume no Hon restrained her, or, in any case it just didn't matter so much, because we moved on to the next thing quickly.   (I think the same is true of Calvino's Invisible Cities -- there's no plot, and so it doesn't matter so much that he meanders around).  But here, the plot exists uneasily with the sight-seeing.