A commonplace book, arranging works of criticism looking at Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo with fragments of memoir/fiction. Presented first as random notes on watching Hitchcock, the fragments soon take up multiple narratives and threads and, like a classic Hitchcock movie, present competing realities. Fragments from a dizzying list of authors, from Truffaut to Philip K. Dick and Geoff Dyer to Bruno Schultz, are meticulously arranged in a fascinating, multilayered reading experience.
"MADELEINE E. is a riveting examination of the self (or selves), spun from the yarn skein in Gabriel Blackwell's labyrinthine mind. Using Hitchcock's masterpiece Vertigo as a springboard for cultural and critical investigation and personal narrative, Blackwell has managed to write an impossibly entertaining book -- indeed, a philosophical page turner." - Amber Sparks, author of "The Unfinished World and Other Stories"
