Seamlessly translated ... This detective novel radically scrambles what we think of, and how we relate to, the genre ... Exceptional style ... Deeply rewarding ... The novel is dense and elliptical, a dreamscape with a powerful undertow ... [A] harrowing and labyrinthine masterpiece.
Garcia plays with genre and metafiction in a way that will attract many readers, but confuse others ... It’s hard to say precisely what Garza wants from us. Many readers enjoy a good literary mystery, turning pages back and forth and trying to piece together clues, but the battle to figure out who is speaking in a given chapter, or who they’re referencing, can unnecessarily confuse more interesting questions such as unreliable narrators or themes of gender inversion ... Fascinating riddles and questions are unfortunately hidden behind what may be one too many experiments in this newest outing by Garza.
Commendable ... Rivera Garza’s nonlinear novel of violence and literature, written in elegiac, incandescent prose, reverses the horror of the victims of femicide along the U.S.-Mexico border with taunting murders of men in the city, a pointed turnabout.
It’s a fairly audacious literary experiment with shades of Roberto Bolaño, but it never really comes together—the narrative trickery is frustrating, and while Rivera Garza is clearly a more than talented author, the effect is ponderous. For a novel with a blood-soaked premise, this one is oddly bloodless. A rare miss from an author with an impeccable bibliography.
