— Wyatt Williams, Creative Loafing
“An experimental prose-poem [that] pushes the boundaries of the novel. .. Calling Blake Butler’s There Is No Year a novel is akin to calling René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images a pipe; both works subtly expand the framework of their respective disciplines by challenging an audience that has solidified its expectations after centuries of familiarity and repetition. .. Butler seems to be making a statement that the novel, as an art form, needs to start tearing down walls and moving in new directions if it is going to survive. [In doing so,] it helps to illuminate a path toward more liberated forms of artistic expression.”
— Josh Davis, Time Out New York (four stars)
“Butler’s sentences are frequently dizzying and poetic, and gathered in engrossing vignette-like sections. .. A challenging, Dalí-esque spin on the horror genre, a postmodern playground… There Is No Year is also often funny and insightful, further proof of Butler’s impressive and innovative talents.”
— Jonathan Fullmer, Time Out Chicago
“Dystopian and sinister.”
— Nylon
“Hypnotic, incantatory.”
— The Rumpus
“Wild [and] poetic.”
— Time Out New York
“All words normally used to craft literary reviews fail. This is an entirely original work that does what the best art should do: challenge the reader. The novel is like a 4G version of fiction, if you will. .. There are also all the elements of a more traditional book, with fully developed characters, mystery, and movement that readers enjoy — and an evocative narrative voice sustained for four hundred pages. Butler takes his ingredients and renders them into a dreamlike whorl, a highly stylized read that serves quite well as a metaphor for our new digital age. And like the best of dreams, There Is No Year also sticks in the brain long after the book is set down.”
— The Atlantan
“An innovative masterpiece. .. A haunting glimpse into a parallel universe.”
— Gina Angelotti, Metro
“Blake Butler, mastermind and visionary, has sneaked up and drugged the American novel. What stumbles awake in the aftermath is feral and awesome in its power.”
— Ben Marcus
“Butler writes about domesticity with a startling, ruthless truthfulness, absurd and deadpan in one breath. .. [The result] feels unlike anything else being written. Butler has been a powerful force in contemporary literature for the past four years, [and] There Is No Year provides further proof that his own fiction is about the most breathtaking and exciting that’s out there.”
— Colin Herd, 3:AM Magazine
“An acid burn of a lucid nightmare. .. Accessible, rewarding, and engaging. .. Undeniably worth the effort.”
— Candra Kolodziej, The Stranger
“If there’s a more thoroughly brilliant and exciting new writer than Blake Butler… well, there just isn’t. I’ve literally lost sleep imagining the fallout when There Is No Year drops and American fiction shifts its axis.”
— Dennis Cooper
“An artfully crafted, stunning piece of nontraditional literature. .. The distinctive writing style and creative insight into the minds of one family deserve analysis.”
— Library Journal
“An endlessly surprising, funny, and subversive writer.”
— Publishers Weekly
“[Butler’s work is] wild but elegant and smart. .. [It] demands to be read.”
— Roxane Gay, The Rumpus