The Absolute Book

The library had already gone, broken up before the sale. James Northover's books passed into the hands of the owners of antiquarian bookshops, except a few long-coveted items that went to his collector friends, perhaps including the ancient scroll box known as 'The Firestarter', because it was said to have survived no fewer than five fires in famous libraries.



So, the book bumping against Beatrice's shoulder blades as she took her last steps was one of those set in old museums and libraries. A book with a light in its long perspective, like the light of a grail. A book with scholarly heroes and hidden treasure.



Beatrice was running in her baggy sweats and bouncing backpack. It was autumn, and there was a light mist. The road between St Cynog's Cross and the village of Princes Gate Magna was thickly covered in fallen leaves, its surface amber but for two black streaks where the leaves had been chewed up and tossed aside by the tyres of passing cars. The road was quiet. Beatrice wasn't wearing headphones. She moved off onto the verge when she heard the car. The mist began to sparkle, and the reflectors on Beatrice's shoes flashed as the headlights caught them.



Whenever a restless night summoned her sister-her grey sweats and swinging ponytail-Taryn never found herself on that road. She was always in the car. In the driver's seat. She was the murderer, Timothy Webber. Taryn thought this might have been because she had spent so much time wondering why Webber had done it. Wondering how anyone does a thing like that.



The trial was held a year after Beatrice died. Taryn attended and became familiar with every detail of what happened-or, at least, what was known.



Webber's car hadn't clipped Beatrice because she wasn't far enough off the road. The police photographs showed a curved tyre track in the black mud. They showed how far he had swerved to catch her. There were no skid marks, because he'd braked already, reducing speed not to pass safely but to hit Beatrice hard enough, he hoped, to subdue her. His car cracked Beatrice's pelvis, and a roadside oak her skull. He stopped, got out, and scoope

simply at the level of how much time they are prepared to devote to it. Yet that very ambition, the sweep and heft of its ideas, ensure that effort expended is amply rewarded.
The Guardian

Full of intrigue, mystery, magic, and history, this is a fascinating read that, despite its length, is hard to put down.
BuzzFeed

At once sad and enticing.
The Wall Street Journal

A marvelous argument for stories. There are Norse gods, references to Merlin, a tour through purgatory and a strange parallel world where magic is real and humans are bit players in the clash of supernatural realms. Bewitching.
The Times (London)

At various points, The Absolute Book resembles a book about books, a psychological crime novel, a romance, a portal fantasy, a technothriller, a historical fantasy, and an allegory. . . . This surfeit of stories, this melding of modes and mixing of genres, is The Absolute Book s greatest strength. . . .  Exuberant and generous and original.
Tor

Knox s restrained, poetic writing works well with this ever-spiraling, mind-blowing optical illusion of a novel, which marries myths and lore from Celtic, Norse, and Judeo-Christian traditions with a variety of literary references. Weird and enigmatic, occasionally slow but never dull, this grand ode to Story itself is one that begs for a reread.
Booklist (starred review)

This darkly luminous fantasy reads like a mystery, thoroughly and wonderfully transporting readers to another world.
Kirkus Reviews

An astonishing novel from an author I have long loved, The Absolute Book catches the reader up on the very first page and carries them away in an exhilarating rush.
Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

Gorgeous . . . The payoffs and reveals are mind-blowing.
Laini Taylor, author of Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Elizabeth Knox has the most original and lateral literary mind in New Zealand.  
Metro

Explosive and surprising . . . quite brilliant.
The Spinoff (NZ)

The Absolute Book's power is in the skill and pace of Knox's storytelling, the perfect spinning of the intricate plot, the sharp dialogue and luminous evocation of place. Knox's landscapes are vivid and beautiful, both the earthly and the otherworldly. I was carried along without objection, and the great pleasure for me, along with the simple one of wanting to know what would happen next, was the feeling that my realist mind had been flattened out - that I had, temporarily, due to the intensity and momentum of the narrative, made some kind of mental shift, lost the compulsion to search for psychological depth (always a source of disquiet) and gone back to an earlier imaginative state, one that pulsed with mysterious possibility.  
Charlotte Grimshaw, Noted (NZ)