... unsettling, fantastical, and often hilarious ... It’s a strange motion this book makes; you could call it meandering but that undersells how consistently riveting it is ... One fascinating thing about this book, out of several, is the amount of detail and bearing down we find here, despite its myriad subplots; this book maintains the weight of its details, and comfortably ... The force driving American Delirium is González’s clear fascination with her fictional subjects. Her lens knows no boundaries, delving into the most minute parts of characters’ lives [...] When we do finally reach a conclusion, we feel less like we have been reading a novel than like we have been listening to a symphony. We understand the novel has to end here, even if we don’t know why — and our mystification becomes one of the book’s many satisfactions.
... the killer-deer-as-avenging-nature subplot is perhaps a little clunky. There is even a consistent critique of the patriarchal nuclear family, an argument that gets bluntly articulated ... These thematic engagements are farcical enough that they contribute to the novel’s overall sense of the absurd—a sense otherwise generated by the gradual accretion of Gonzalez’s whimsical details ... These details are both relentless and intensely pleasurable ... But to focus on the whimsy is to miss what might be American Delirium’s most compelling achievement: its subtle recalibration of the critique of the realist novel. For most narrative theorists, realism is a mode that leans decidedly conservative ... By drawing inspiration from natural history’s mimetic project but rejecting that project’s ideological mission in its wild, absurdist plot, American Delirium harnesses dead and enclosed animals to mount what [Heather K.] Love would call 'new living realities' ... American Delirium might be seen as performing a kind of speculative taxidermy. In its simultaneous parody of contemporary American culture and its joy in how often the parodic and the real coincide, it both preserves and imagines otherwise. It shifts seamlessly between representing the 'has been' and the 'might be.'
[A] wild romp ... Note: There is some graphic animal cruelty here, so if you are sensitive to that, this is not your book ... The lively pace and absurdity of American Delirium could easily go off the rails, but González keeps a tight control over each of her characters even as they navigate their ever-stranger adventures. The novel is well served by translator Heather Cleary’s light touch, which allows for a certain amount of zaniness without sacrificing the plot or the well-defined characters.
... a good challenge, its braided strands of storyline forming a convoluted vine. It's easy to find oneself lost, sentence by sentence, in its tendrils and tangents, but when viewed from a bit of distance, teh novel can be apprehended as one organic, twining whole ... The difficulty of American Delirium lies not with the plot but rather with its somewhat scattered mode of presentation and in the end, the author's tying-up feels a bit engineered and hurried ... On the other hand, and not to be discounted, throughout American Delirium we find characters' interesting ruminations upon a variety of important matters ... González's descriptive writing is very strong throughout and the novel's quirky, creative energy is engaging.
As its title suggests, it’s a droll bit of social commentary. But underneath, it’s also more than a little in earnest ... González doles out basic information about her three protagonists slowly, and they take shape like a puzzle gradually being completed ... González stylishly recounts Beryl’s regrets about her dropout past and Vik’s tentative approach to—well, everything. Her most lyrical writing is saved for Berenice ... In González’s bitingly satirical vision, Americans can’t seem to find a middle ground between romanticizing nature and exploiting it until it either collapses or bursts ... González is a fresh voice, asking important questions in an engaging and incisive way.
... unsettling yet erudite ... Behind this baffling turn of events runs veiled social commentary on capitalism and the progressive mentality replete with astute observations on aging, death, and human nature that becomes most poignant when seen through Beryl’s eyes. The mystery of the hallucinogen and the lives impacted by it coalesce into a profound and much-needed tale full of hope and kindness.
If this sounds wacky, it is, but it’s wacky in the grim, smart way of a Coen brothers film. González, who lives in Argentina, uses absurdity to show us that there is the thinnest of lines between utopia and dystopia, all without ever naming any real-world correlates ... An uncategorizable novel that manages to be both zany and profound.
Argentinian González anatomizes in her skillful English-language debut an American community’s pursuit of enlightenment and the violence and madness left in its wake ... This has the makings of a zany psychedelic romp, but instead the delirium is marvelously controlled and administered in doses just potent enough to ease patient readers into this off-kilter world. González’s distorted utopian vision is a memorable trip.
