RaveAsymptoteAided by Herrera’s ingenious application of metaphor and colloquialism—controlled artfully in Dillman’s hands—a carcass putrefying beneath the Mexican sun takes the shape of a pregnant woman giving birth, rucksacks that scatter the pathway to the border are loaded not with objects but \'crammed with time\' ... Though the novel’s finale is at once dauntingly cynical and dizzyingly enigmatic, Herrera nevertheless possesses a penetrating faculty about these issues, which he captures with masterful clarity in content as well as form ... The spoken-word quality of Herrera’s prose suggests his own stories might be written with the same unbounded rapidity as Makina’s text, offering readers the kind of direct ferocity that is only rarely, if ever, matched by the author’s peers ... an enduring document of world literature.
