Keyhole Factory: A Novel

“Gillespie has a keen satiric mind…And although it has become fashionable in recent years for literary authors to take on the apocalypse, you would have to go back to Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro to find such a purely poetic take on the unthinkable.”—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“…frequently brilliant. Those willing to grapple with its complexities are rewarded with a remarkable work of fiction.” —AMERICAN READER

“It’s useful to point out here that much literary experiment is essential playful, fun. And Gillespie’s novel, despite being about disease and the the near total destruction of mankind, has a (ever so deliciously macabre) hopeful side.” —NUMÉRO CINQ

“…This is an experimental novel—chunks of poetry interrupt the traditional chapters, graphics appear throughout, and a middle section is horizontal—but the pleasure of the text is fine and true…” —LIBRARY JOURNAL

“…one of the most inventive and absorbing books I’ve read in the last year…” —INSIDE HIGHER ED

“…a violent, apocalyptic story told with an arsenal of narrative tropes.” —BOOKLIST

“…stupendous, mind-bending…” —AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW

“…by turns bewildering and gorgeous, maddening and profound…” —SMILE POLITELY

“…stunning…” —THE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN: NOBBIE AWARDS

“The author’s foray into the inconceivable digs far beneath the trusty surface of cause and effect. He parlays his scientific familiarity to create maddening illustrations showing all we know is consistently less than what we don’t.” —BOOK CORNER

Praise for William Gillespie

“William Gillespie…is one of the wittiest and most original writers in contemporary American literature.” –Robert Coover

“…his vastly superior linguistic skills, mathematical mind, intelligence and curiosity combine with his energy…to produce writing of a unique richness and playfulness.”—Lucia Cordell Getsi

“Gillespie works in a contemporary tradition whose foremost practitioners are members of the Oulipo, the Paris-based group of writers and mathematicians founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Gillespie’s poetry can seem as feverishly wrought as some works of Ian Monk and at other times as stylishly refined as some works of Harry Mathews.” — Doug Nufer, American Book Review

“…a writer who has clearly learned his chops well.” —Eckhard Gerdes, Context

“[Gillespie’s] language here is far from restrained—it is disciplined, wily, animated, resourceful, in turn nonsensical and musical, but supremely vital, dazzling to confront (“read” is not quite the verb), sculpted lines smeary with fingerprints, stunned by the audacity of their own construction.”—Joseph Dewey, Review of Contemporary Fiction

“His imagination is sharp, raucous, random, and contrarian.”—Lance Olsen, American Book Review

“I think the world is finally ready for William Gillespie.”–Philip Graham