"The problem with literature, like life, said Don Crispín, is that in the end people always turn into bastards." (p. 114)
( )

This book reminded me of Marlon James's book A Brief History of Seven Killings, with a lot of fragments of different characters' perspectives that add up to a story without the need for a single central narrator. This book was harder to follow, though. Each short segment was a sort of interview in which a character is telling his or her memories about some time or place or person, and while most of them tie clearly enough to Arturo Belano, the central character, it is not always clear why a particular segment was included. The first part of the book is a bit more straightforward, introducing Belano from his perspective and following him as he winds up eventually in a car with a former prostitute named Lupe and 2 of Belano's friends, on the run to escape Lupe's pimp. And, after hundreds of pages of other stuff, the story picks up again where it left off, with the 4 of them in the car. It was a relief to get back to this story after so much rambling digression and jumbled storytelling, which was maybe part of the intended effect. Still, I didn't enjoy this book much, and found its structure unnecessarily experimental and unfocused. ( )

What a trial. Endless blocks of text detailing the movements of characters we've been given no reason to care at all about. ( )

It's hard for me to recommend this book, since so much of what resonated with me feels so personal. Both Arturo Belano and I grew up in Chile and eventually moved to Catalonia, married and had kids there. I could recognize the chilenisms and catalanisms, and I felt a deep understanding of some characters' feelings and intentions. We both were looking for things when young that looked different as time passed. We both had friends whose life plans didn't turn as they expected. We both looked for some truths that ended up not being quite true. But then I think about it and I guess beyond the coincidence in locations (and not even the exact same coordinates, but some arbitrary borders), this all might resonate with quite some people. ( )

An ingenious construction. Funny, too. (38) ( )