In Mexico City, a young mother is writing a novel of her days as a translator living in New York. In Harlem, a translator is desperate to publish the works of Gilberto Owen, an obscure Mexican poet.
And in Philadelphia, Gilberto Owen recalls his friendship with Lorca, and the young woman he saw in the windows of passing trains.
Valeria Luiselli’s debut signals the arrival of a major international writer and an unexpected and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.
Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Mundane musings. I did not really enjoy this one unfortunately. I DNF’d it in the 20s, later picked it up again, DNF’d it for the final time 2/3rds the way through.
I read this one for Life’s Library Book Club.
When I saw the list of literary references included in our book club package, I was so excited to start it.
However I couldn’t find the rhythm of the book. It was a compilation of random excerpts that didn’t take deep dives as stand-alones and didn’t make much sense to me strung together either. They weren’t so interconnected for me and I had a hard time following.
I expected it to be emotional, philosophical, entertaining, some sort of pursuit. Something along those lines, like an infusion of some underpinnings to bring completeness to the entire narrative, building up to something interesting, but instead it was quite flat. Really boring actually. Each entry lacked context and I hoped that together it would be a bit more coherent in a creative way, but sadly, it didn’t make much sense.
It was outside of a logical and creative realm that I could understand. A lot of it left my brain after reading. No themes lingered in my thoughts afterward which I was hoping for, something to give me some sort of foresight into the list of artists or commonality, nothing, just confusion in my head.
I just didn’t think or feel with this one.
Maybe I should have tried reading it in the original language of Spanish?
I’d like to try reading something of a different sort by this author though, perhaps something with some type of promised focus that might be more appealing to my style and taste in books.
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