Valente’s lush description and unparalleled imagination really make Palimpsest what it is, but just the conceit is enticing. The titular Palimpsest is a magical city accessible by only the strangest of means—sex with someone who has already been. When visitors return, they carry a fragment of Palimpsest’s map on their bodies, the place their next partner will arrive. The novel follows four characters, each reckoning with a loss as they seek to explore the city. The defining emotion of Palimpsest is a profound longing—for a person or a place, for beauty, intimacy, adventure, or purpose, for something stranger and lovelier than our everyday world.