Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to turn.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and today my guest is Mark Z. Danielowski.

We're here to celebrate the completion of the fifth volume of his serial novel The Familiar.

This fifth volume, each volume has a name of its own.

This volume is called Redwood, and it brings what he calls the first season of the familiar to a completion.

Simply put, it's about a 12-year-old girl who finds one May Day, a tiny kitten scrambling to live, caught against the grill of a curbside drainage duct in the

middle of a downpour. And she is the one who heeds the call and rests this tiny fragile creature

from its demise. The climax of this volume is that that kitten, that cat, is finally given a name.

Yes, and more seriously, since we're talking about volume 5, I think it's in part an exploration of what possession is, of how we come to possess something

or how we are possessed by something.

And despite what the commercial environment is like in which we live, it's a slow process.

It's a messy process. It's a messy process.

It's complicated.

And just because you meet someone or you save something

or you participate in something doesn't mean quite

...