Valeria Luiselli is as much a cartographer as a writer, interested in finding areas still unmapped ... [S]he combines fictional narrative with historical and intellectual points of reference, and the result is writing without preconceptions, as airy and open as a soccer field.
At every turn, the book has this careful architecture, even if it feels like a strange, blind alley. Luiselli writes with a confidence that demonstrates she's going somewhere.
Filtered through Luiselli's brilliant, polymath imagination, there's nothing icky about all those 'ics' — various modes of storytelling, each showcased in its own chapter.
[I]t displays an imaginative hyperactivity that occasionally veers into gimmickry. Yet it is a work of immense charm and originality, written in vivid, witty prose.
Mexican author Valeria Luiselli’s novel, translated by Christina MacSweeney, is interesting and singular; it bristles with references to philosophy and literature, from Tacitus to Baudrillard via Montaigne and GK Chesterton. It is quirky, funny even, and highly structured.
On occasion, the book feels like a patchwork of mismatching material — a collage of quotes, photos and mad antics. For the most part, though, Luiselli thrills with her kaleidoscopic mix of narrative styles, metafictional riffs and Borgesian fantasy, and delivers a comic 'dental autobiography' and a shrewd meditation on the worth of art and literature.
While the novel does takes very weird turns, as a whole, particularly in terms of language, it doesn’t quite achieve the strange and uncanny pleasures of its ancestors—books by Vila-Matas, Borges, or Aira...The reader’s conscious fun in untangling what is being said, in such a lovely, spare and playful voice, takes precedence over a more subconscious emotional rush.
On one hand, the book features highbrow 'allegories' based on works by Jumex collection artists like Olafur Eliasson...On the other, Luiselli is emulating crowd-pleasing serial fiction writers of the 19th century...and so even those weird allegories tend toward the rollicking and personable.
