Captives speaks to Sebald’s call to stick within the register of memory, even if memory has been stripped of its supporting features.
Aidt perceives with great clarity the intricacies of relationships, not just romantic or sexual, though they are prominent, and she does it with an apparent cool distance.
By Night the Mountain Burns – Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel
It is a melodic text rife with images of hollowed canoes and mist-enveloped mountains.
Diary of the Fall – Michel Laub
According to these numbers, the narrator knows more about his grandfather (38+22=60) than either about his father (31+28=59) or about himself (31+26=57).
A Distant Father – Antonio Skármeta
Brevity is not a shortcoming here and in no way keeps the narrative from being a fulfilling read.
Reads almost like slapstick Sebald, Bernhard on laughing gas.
Bolaño: A Biography in Conversations – Mónica Maristain
A kind of memorial service where stories — and differing accounts of the man — can be heard amid the rapturous din of conjecture.
I Called Him Necktie – Milena Michiko Flašar
We realize: no one is what they seem. We realize: everyone has private tragedies; everyone is a tiny book.
It is a spy novel, a romance, a society novel, a psychological novel, it is littered with aphoristic reflections, moments of literary criticism, cultural and political analyses.
The result of Baricco’s game of omission could be seen either as an overweight but undefined metaphor, or an eerie suggestion of the ineffable power of words.