PositiveThe New York TimesIn The Linden Tree, a boy who climbs a tree during the coup d’état that overthrew Juan Domingo Perón’s democratic government becomes the reason the tree is cut down ... Peronism figures here as something like a childish stage in Argentine history, and Aira’s deceptively transparent fiction is testament to his ability to turn childlike fear into art. Aira’s work is varied and extensive, but The Linden Tree may be one of its best points of entry, affirming the existence of a Latin American literature that refuses to conform to the conventions and stereotypes of magical realism, social realism or other clichés about fiction from this part of the globe. Let it be, as Aira’s narrator puts it, \'our little world, our refuge and our secret.\'
Carla Guelfenbein, Trans. by John Cullen
PanThe New York Times Book ReviewGuelfenbein narrates this intricate plot in chapters that rotate among Estévez, Husson and Infante. The Estévez chapters are the most daring, stylistically, because they are narrated in the second person: He addresses Sigall in prose whose emphasis on the \'you\' aspires to be poetic. As in the rest of the book, however, the effect is formulaic and sentimental. Readers never get a sense of Sigall’s literary achievement, despite the fragments of her work scattered throughout, and the characters are two-dimensional ... The world of In the Distance With You...is one of mansions, champagne, private clubs, crystal lamps and Debussy, distributed among glamorous cities like Grenoble, Paris and New York. At one point Husson feels \'like doing crazy things, like jumping, like throwing a ball high up into the sky, like dancing.\' It would be nice if this novel provoked similar desires in readers, but all they may want to do is to put the book aside as soon as they can.
