RaveFull StopIn the tradition of what Ricardo Piglia has called conceptual literature, we are presented here with an intellectual puzzle that reminds us that it is also possible to be passionate about ideas ... the novel quickly becomes a profound meditation on the blurry line separating humanity from animality. Unearthing fascinating references to the history of camouflage, it finds in the chameleonic dissemblance of animals and in the phenomenon of animal mimesis a resounding metaphor through which to think about questions regarding identity ... The novel then becomes a voyage of discovery that in turn leads us readers to many other voyages, opening roads that lead from New York to the Caribbean tropics, and from Israel to the Central American jungle. Guided by its obsessive characters and their fixations, the book elegantly takes the reader for a tour of Latin America’s labyrinthine contemporary history ... All of that, and more, encapsulated within five parts that could well have worked as five short independent novels, were it not for the detective plot that skillfully weaves them together from beginning to end ... The narrative’s kaleidoscopic variety ties in neatly with the novel’s conceptual premises regarding mimicry. It also forces the reader to wonder: what defines an author if narrative unity can no longer be found at the level of style? ... a novel whose success is predicated upon the reverberation of its images. It builds, through metaphors and the subtleness of its linguistic virtuosity, a universe where nature and culture finally meet at the end of a long voyage.
