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thepoisonwoodreader's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
buggirl48's review against another edition
5.0
actual review pending…… so much to talk about but will go ahead and say no one is doing experimental translated fic like coach house…. crazy ride i wish never ended
ramreadsagain's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
4.25
"I have a new understanding of Piglia’s famous question: how to narrate the horror of real events?"
I'm not sure enjoyable is the word to use when referring to my experience reading this book, but I certainly had a great time. It's a claustrophobic novel about four Spanish friends trying to make some money working for an agency in France under the oppressive summer heat. They expect to be picking grapes but instead end up performing various roles at chicken and duck factory farms, living on a camping site in an isolated town.
At its core this book is about memory, writing, and communication, as the friends refuse to really talk to each other about the work they're doing, and we are constantly reminded that our narrator with a bad memory is telling us what happened based on his recollection of his journal entries, with a slightly suspicious defensiveness about the fact that he's just "telling us what happened". I would also consider this to fall within the subgenre of ecofiction, with commentary of the horrors of factory farming and monopolised genetically modified crop industries.
I can understand why some of the marketing is leaning into the horror aspects, both because of the above as well as several plot points. That the narrator has the same name and description as the author also brings a certain creepiness to it as you wonder how much is fictional (in an interview Munir talks about this being based on true events). It's certainly very tense at times though I do think anyone picking this up solely in search of horror may end up disappointed. It's heavily literary and more of an exploration of story-telling and how it connects to reality and memory.
This was very good and also my second read translated by Julia Sanches in as many weeks. Definitely one of those books I'll keep thinking back to, and can see myself rereading.
Thank you to the publisher for an advance digital copy via Netgalley.
etste's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
lizzillia's review against another edition
3.75
Published 19 June 2024. This short Fitzcarraldo novel could almost be a novel about writing - there are so many references to different authors and the narrator is constantly reminding us that he is telling us a story based upon his memories - his journal. Our narrator, Munir, is a graduate and with three friends he has left Madrid to travel to France for the grape harvest. But things go wrong. The campsite is a nightmare - the caravan has only 2 beds and the other residents spend all their time complaining about the four boys - although with the boys behaviour, I think I would have complained too. When they sign on at the agency, they find that there is no grape harvest and they are sent to a type of industrial farm to catch and vaccinate chickens. Think battery farms although they cannot surely be as awful as this place - can they? They are also sent to another unit where they seem to be fertilizing crops. The work is horrific and depressing and the four gradually become more and more depressed. They also become convinced that there is something sinister going on as people they work with seem to be dying. Munir is constantly telling us that he is sharing his truth with us, but you wonder whether the memories that he draws upon are accurate. Is he reliable? Is is actually telling us the truth or has he deliberately left things out because they are just too awful and he has 'forgotten' about them. I read somewhere that is is literary horror, but for me the horror wasn't really there. What was interesting for me was the way the character contemplated writing, in particular short story writing and the way he references Hemingway's iceberg theory that deeper meaning in a short story should not be evident on the surface. Maybe that is what Munir is doing to us here, he is letting us find the deeper meaning hidden below.
booksnpunks's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
One of my most anticipated books of the year and an incredibly constructed book. It explores not only the nature of writing and its relationship to memory, but the connection between the horrors and experience of reality, and how we choose to tell them as a story.
Living Things is about four friends who decide to drive all the way from Madrid to the south of France in order to pick grapes for the summer and earn enough money to cover them for the next year of their university course. When they get there, they find the campsite is a complete nightmare. Their caravan has no wheels and only two beds to sleep in and they are surrounded by uninviting neighbours. When they go to the agency to find work they are told there is no grape harvest this year and instead they are carted off to an industrial farm to catch and vaccinate chickens, and to fertilize strange looking crops. The work is horrific, tiring and never-ending but the four friends never speak of it. Instead they become slowly more depressed and desensitized to the work, questioning the real jobs of those around them as it becomes apparent something a lot more sinister is going on beneath their noses.
I loved the literary references and the discussions on what makes a story, and how the constant insistence that Munir was doing nothing but sharing his truth - not creating but telling - created a sense of mistrust and unreliability from the get-go and through the rest of the book. The prologue was particularly powerful in setting up the horror in a really meta-fictional way. He says things along the lines of "when I say everything was covered in blood, I mean everything was covered in blood, it's not a symbol for anything bigger", and these parts really send a chill through me and got me wondering about the unspoken horrors of the novel which weren't written down. It becomes more apparent through the book that Munir is telling us everything from memory and I can't help but think about the things he might have deliberately left out or forgotten about because they were too horrific for him to share. The use of the Hemingway iceberg theory was used in a way I've not seen it spoken about before and I loved the characters musings on the nature of writing and short story telling, and using their own ideas on it to analyse the book itself.
The novel shines in it's self-awareness and meta-fiction, whereas I was expecting more of the horror and claustrophobic feelings seen in books like Fever Dream (which does get a mention). The creepiness and horror aspect could have been dialled up to 11 but it was left very undeveloped which is where this book fell short. If you convince yourself to not read this book as a literary horror, which it's being marketed as, it's very good, but setting up the expectation of horror is where this book might let readers down as this is a novel more about writing, language and the gaps of language for me rather than outright literary horror. Objectively it is a very clever book and I think on a re-read I would love to annotate it and look at the writing in terms of Hemingway and Borges because there's so much to unpack in it. Would be great to see it on the International Booker list too.
I'd recommend this more to fans of Latin American classic fiction such as fans of Borges, Cortazar and Bolano rather than horror fans as it speaks more to this generation of writing than it does to Latin America's new wave of horror fiction. I enjoy how it has tried to blend the two but I think slightly more literary horror in this novel would've made it an absolute triumph for me.
Living Things is about four friends who decide to drive all the way from Madrid to the south of France in order to pick grapes for the summer and earn enough money to cover them for the next year of their university course. When they get there, they find the campsite is a complete nightmare. Their caravan has no wheels and only two beds to sleep in and they are surrounded by uninviting neighbours. When they go to the agency to find work they are told there is no grape harvest this year and instead they are carted off to an industrial farm to catch and vaccinate chickens, and to fertilize strange looking crops. The work is horrific, tiring and never-ending but the four friends never speak of it. Instead they become slowly more depressed and desensitized to the work, questioning the real jobs of those around them as it becomes apparent something a lot more sinister is going on beneath their noses.
I loved the literary references and the discussions on what makes a story, and how the constant insistence that Munir was doing nothing but sharing his truth - not creating but telling - created a sense of mistrust and unreliability from the get-go and through the rest of the book. The prologue was particularly powerful in setting up the horror in a really meta-fictional way. He says things along the lines of "when I say everything was covered in blood, I mean everything was covered in blood, it's not a symbol for anything bigger", and these parts really send a chill through me and got me wondering about the unspoken horrors of the novel which weren't written down. It becomes more apparent through the book that Munir is telling us everything from memory and I can't help but think about the things he might have deliberately left out or forgotten about because they were too horrific for him to share. The use of the Hemingway iceberg theory was used in a way I've not seen it spoken about before and I loved the characters musings on the nature of writing and short story telling, and using their own ideas on it to analyse the book itself.
The novel shines in it's self-awareness and meta-fiction, whereas I was expecting more of the horror and claustrophobic feelings seen in books like Fever Dream (which does get a mention). The creepiness and horror aspect could have been dialled up to 11 but it was left very undeveloped which is where this book fell short. If you convince yourself to not read this book as a literary horror, which it's being marketed as, it's very good, but setting up the expectation of horror is where this book might let readers down as this is a novel more about writing, language and the gaps of language for me rather than outright literary horror. Objectively it is a very clever book and I think on a re-read I would love to annotate it and look at the writing in terms of Hemingway and Borges because there's so much to unpack in it. Would be great to see it on the International Booker list too.
I'd recommend this more to fans of Latin American classic fiction such as fans of Borges, Cortazar and Bolano rather than horror fans as it speaks more to this generation of writing than it does to Latin America's new wave of horror fiction. I enjoy how it has tried to blend the two but I think slightly more literary horror in this novel would've made it an absolute triumph for me.
stan_vdb's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
evagallud's review against another edition
4.0
«...el terror siempre es una cosa blanda y pegajosa y nunca algo efusivo, nunca una explosión».
.
Cuatro jóvenes españoles, tres de ellos aspirantes a escritores, viajan un verano al sur de Francia para ganar algo de dinero en la vendimia y vivir "experiencias", pero terminan trabajando en otra cosa.
Esta novela de Munir Hachemi, madrileño de origen argelino, te atrapa con su ritmo ágil, un toque de humor y una intriga que se va oscureciendo a medida que avanza el relato. En este thriller laboral –como lo califica el autor– la historia de los jóvenes se entrelaza con las reflexiones del narrador sobre literatura, filosofía, ecología y política y completa así un cuadro en el que el verdadero horror se encuentra en los hechos reales.
.
Cuatro jóvenes españoles, tres de ellos aspirantes a escritores, viajan un verano al sur de Francia para ganar algo de dinero en la vendimia y vivir "experiencias", pero terminan trabajando en otra cosa.
Esta novela de Munir Hachemi, madrileño de origen argelino, te atrapa con su ritmo ágil, un toque de humor y una intriga que se va oscureciendo a medida que avanza el relato. En este thriller laboral –como lo califica el autor– la historia de los jóvenes se entrelaza con las reflexiones del narrador sobre literatura, filosofía, ecología y política y completa así un cuadro en el que el verdadero horror se encuentra en los hechos reales.
mariavazquezsolaun's review against another edition
3.0
¿3,5 o 4?
Las tres estrellas se me quedan cortas a la hora de valorar Cosas Vivas, una novela en la que me adentré sin leer la sinopsis. Una estrategia adoptada tras el desencuentro en varias de mis últimas lecturas entre lo vendido y lo leído y que ha resultado especialmente acertada con esta novela, la primera de Munir Hachemi, ¡la primera!
Cosas vivas narra, a priori, las peripecias de cuatro jóvenes españoles que viajan en coche al sur de Francia durante el verano para ganar dinero en la vendimia, pero que terminan trabajando como temporeros en empresas biotecnológicas. Esa premisa bien podría ser el comienzo de una road movie o una historia disfrutona cualquiera y, sin embargo, la historia es todo menos disfrutona para sus protagonistas. Y esa fue una de las primeras cosas que me gustó de Cosas Vivas: no reconocer el lugar al que pensaba que me llevaría la novela.
Durante las primeras páginas la ingenuidad inicial de los cuatro protagonistas me resultó muy refrescante y compensó las reiteradas explicaciones del escritor y protagonista -Munir Hachemi- sobre cómo iba a enfrentarse a esta novela. Reconozco que la primera vez en la que expone su compromiso de escribir la historia como realmente ocurrió, sin artificios, compartiendo incluso algunos ejemplos para ilustrarlo, me ganó. La reiteración, sin embargo, me pareció innecesaria.
Dejando atrás esas primeras páginas la historia gana cuerpo. La realidad amenazante con la que se dan de bruces en Francia obliga a nuestros protagonistas a reaccionar y a nosotros, como lectores, a reflexionar sobre esta sociedad de consumo de la que somos parte, haciéndonos conscientes de lo que muchas veces tratamos de ignorar por comodidad. No voy a desvelar qué trabajos se ven obligados a realizar los chicos, pero si que lo hacen a través de empresas de contratación dudosas, con condiciones precarias que los obligan a malvivir y al servicio de esas grandes empresas biotecnológicas que explotan el mundo agrario. Y de como estos trabajos tiene consecuencias en su vida y les roban esa ingenuidad inicial.
Cosas Vivas es una novela que invita a la reflexión. Reflexión no solo sobre la amistad, la industria agroalimentaria o la precariedad, también sobre cómo plasmar la realidad sin permitir que la literatura se entrometa.
Las tres estrellas se me quedan cortas a la hora de valorar Cosas Vivas, una novela en la que me adentré sin leer la sinopsis. Una estrategia adoptada tras el desencuentro en varias de mis últimas lecturas entre lo vendido y lo leído y que ha resultado especialmente acertada con esta novela, la primera de Munir Hachemi, ¡la primera!
Cosas vivas narra, a priori, las peripecias de cuatro jóvenes españoles que viajan en coche al sur de Francia durante el verano para ganar dinero en la vendimia, pero que terminan trabajando como temporeros en empresas biotecnológicas. Esa premisa bien podría ser el comienzo de una road movie o una historia disfrutona cualquiera y, sin embargo, la historia es todo menos disfrutona para sus protagonistas. Y esa fue una de las primeras cosas que me gustó de Cosas Vivas: no reconocer el lugar al que pensaba que me llevaría la novela.
Durante las primeras páginas la ingenuidad inicial de los cuatro protagonistas me resultó muy refrescante y compensó las reiteradas explicaciones del escritor y protagonista -Munir Hachemi- sobre cómo iba a enfrentarse a esta novela. Reconozco que la primera vez en la que expone su compromiso de escribir la historia como realmente ocurrió, sin artificios, compartiendo incluso algunos ejemplos para ilustrarlo, me ganó. La reiteración, sin embargo, me pareció innecesaria.
Dejando atrás esas primeras páginas la historia gana cuerpo. La realidad amenazante con la que se dan de bruces en Francia obliga a nuestros protagonistas a reaccionar y a nosotros, como lectores, a reflexionar sobre esta sociedad de consumo de la que somos parte, haciéndonos conscientes de lo que muchas veces tratamos de ignorar por comodidad. No voy a desvelar qué trabajos se ven obligados a realizar los chicos, pero si que lo hacen a través de empresas de contratación dudosas, con condiciones precarias que los obligan a malvivir y al servicio de esas grandes empresas biotecnológicas que explotan el mundo agrario. Y de como estos trabajos tiene consecuencias en su vida y les roban esa ingenuidad inicial.
Cosas Vivas es una novela que invita a la reflexión. Reflexión no solo sobre la amistad, la industria agroalimentaria o la precariedad, también sobre cómo plasmar la realidad sin permitir que la literatura se entrometa.
inestelle_'s review
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty
Minor: Car accident