Reviews tagging 'Violence'

La Liebre by César Aira

1 review

sherbertwells's review against another edition

adventurous challenging hopeful reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

An English naturalist ventures into the pampas in search of an elusive treasure—a flying hare, a Mapuche chief or a Hapsburg diamond—and finds himself in a knotty adventure that overturns his world. All of Aira’s work makes me extravagantly happy, and although this has not unseated An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter among my favorites it is great work on colonialism, the mutability of race and the beauty of language.

“His emotional life had dried up years earlier—when in the first flush of his own youth, he had lost someone he loved who might have taught him to cry. From that day on, he had never felt the sense of dread that is a natural part of life: he cold see this now, when he was least expecting it, but in someone else” (66)

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Murder, Gun violence, Colonisation, and Violence

Minor: Sexual content, Pregnancy, and Racism

On one occasion a woman is almost literally "fridged" but since

she isn't really dead and gets her own say in the story

it's not so bad. Also, as in some of Aira's other works, the protagonist exoticizes the indigenous characters but is proven wrong by the narrative itself.