RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksThe complex narrative tapestry is a marvel. However, the fictional characters don’t come to life all that much: there are very few scenes with dialogue and anything resembling suspense. It’s the history so thoroughly researched, documented, and commented upon vitriolically and wittily that makes the most gripping pages here ... With Drndić, I am tempted to skim through the passages about the protagonist to get to the astonishing history, which reads like a collective noir ... I am impressed with how Celia Hawkesworth has managed to translate these long sentences with ease and grace ... she writes expertly about people who have a difficult and painful story ... We are reading an energetic mind, and partly the title fits here — it is an electric encephalogram of a mind at work, looking for enflamed spots in the brain, in memory, in time. Her writing is acerbic ... Sure, narratively EEG is imperfect, and it satisfies Henry James’s characterization of the novel as a large, loose, baggy monster. But reading it is as educational and exciting as a guided tour of hell, to borrow Francine Prose’s title.
