Gallery: The Pickle Index Is a Delightfully Weird, App-Driven Novel Like No Other
Sudden Oak01The Pickle Index
Through *The Pickle Index*—an app, a hardcover, and a paperback book—users enter into Destina, a dystopian world governed by pickle consumption.
Sudden Oak022015-06-13 03.43.18
You can read *The Pickle Index* in a two-volume hardcover edition.
Sudden Oak032015-06-13 03.43.53
One volume, "News," tells the plot from the government's perspective through *The Daily Scrutinizer*; the other, "Snacks," tells it from the point-of-view of Flora Bialy, a girl in the circus troupe, through her submissions to the nation's pickle recipe index.
Eli Horowitz042015-06-13 03.59.42
Horowitz and Quinn recommend reading the hardcover version by alternating between "News" and "Snacks", learning the story through the perspectives of Flora and the government.
Sudden Oak052015-06-13 03.58.42
Each of the chapters starts with a full-page illustration. Readers can combine the two pictures—say, the illustrations of Chapter 6 of Flora's perspective and Chapter 6 of the government's—to see a fuller explanation of the narrative.
Sudden Oak062015-06-13 03.55.31
Each of the 10 sets of illustrations pair together in a different way, which the reader has to figure out on his or her own. "It resonates with the narrative, where no one has complete information,” says Horowitz.
Sudden Oak0702
Quinn designed *The Pickle Index* app to look clunky, like it actually had been designed by an inefficient, pickle-obsessed government.
Sudden Oak0803
Official news reports from the government and recipe submissions from Flora Bialy alternate, as in the print edition.
Sudden Oak0907
Extra material—like a map of how pickle recipes are delivered to a phone or tablet—are interspersed with the narrative, so the user has to find the story by wading through superfluous information.
