Reviews

Ghosts by César Aira

dankhill's review

reflective slow-paced

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

3.0

melwisz's review

challenging slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

r__kat's review

challenging emotional reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

alexlanz's review

The dream sequence read like a weird anthropology paper.

kalchainein's review

I’m pretty big about finishing what I start, and even books I dislike generally have something that grabs me.  But every time I picked this up, the next day I’d realize I barely remembered anything from the prior session. And what’s worse is that I didn’t care. DNF’d—with disappointment, because I’ve heard good things about Aira. Maybe another work of his will click with me.

jacob_wren's review

César Aira writes:

The unbuilt is characteristic of those arts whose realization requires the remunerated work of many people, the purchase of materials, the use of expensive equipment, etc. Cinema is the paradigmatic case: anyone can have an idea for a film, but then you need expertise, finance, personnel, and these obstacles mean that ninety-nine times out of a hundred the film doesn’t get made. Which might make you wonder if the prodigious bother of it all – which technological advances have exacerbated if anything – isn’t actually an essential part of cinema’s charm, since, paradoxically, it gives everyone access to movie-making, in the form of pure daydreaming. It’s the same in the other arts, to a greater or lesser extent. And yet it is possible to imagine an art in which the limitations of reality would be minimized, in which the made and the unmade would be indistinct, an art that would be instantaneously real, without ghosts. And perhaps that art exists, under the name of literature.

drewsof's review

3.0

I think my taste for Aira is on the wane, sad to say. This is an older one and it's more coherent than some of his others -- loved the long architectural philosophical digressions -- but he's so bad at writing women most of the time and this one felt particularly egregious not just for that but also the weird gay panic about the ghosts?
I did enjoy reading this one though, more than I have several of his other works. I'm sure I'll read the rest that get published, but maybe after taking a few years' break...

jrl6809's review

challenging slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

chalicotherex's review

2.0

Aira mostly avoids the outlandish weirdness he's known for and he's better off for it.

I get that what he's doing is hard (supposedly he only writes forwards, never going back to insert something into the text) but often it comes off as kind of contrived, with lots of out-there elements that belong more in a cartoon.

austindoherty's review

5.0

One of those books where you can watch the author having fun with it. "Now the condominiums, the skyscrapers that the Nias haven't built (negating the negation of the unbuilt, as it were), would represent symbolism itself." Okay, we get it, you're brilliant, can we move on?