Historical reconstruction takes both figurative and literal forms in Susan Daitch’s ingenious contrapuntal novel ... [a] brutal motif, as well as the novel’s mangled chronology and open-ended, fragmentary sections, makes Siege of Comedians sound something like Roberto Bolaño’s gothic 2666. Yet for all its latent darkness, the novel is inquisitive rather than morbid, exhibiting a boundless curiosity in its characters’ unusual professions, a delight in the uncanny ways that history connects and repeats itself and a quixotic sense of hope that whatever has been lost to time might, one day, be found and restored.
It’s a particular joy to find oneself immersed in the minutiae of complicated, highly specialized work, and Daitch excels at zooming in and making us feel like experts ... three novellas, each of which could easily stand on its own...can be read as a meditation on the nature of storytelling, Siege of Comedians drills down one level further, to the building blocks of communication itself ... Some readers will surely find Siege of Comedians a bit dizzying. Indeed, it can be a challenge to keep track of the many names, places, timelines, and histories without feeling under siege yourself. But the experience of thinking about Siege of Comedians in the days and weeks after consuming it is your reward for the effort that a close reading of this novel requires.
... ebullient ... offbeat ... Throughout, Daitch finds stimulating connections and writes with sharp irony and joy. This offers delights on every page.
By the final pages, the reader is simultaneously exhausted by the rigors of exposition-heavy prose and invigorated by the intellectual ambition of the author’s takes on death, time, history, and everything in between. An ambitious novel written in sometimes overly ambitious prose, this book charms, intrigues, and bewilders.
