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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Pretty prose. Boring story. Or stories, since inside this story are a bunch of allegories as told by characters in their own heads. In the end I found this an uninteresting approach to an interesting concept. I simply didn't care about the characters or their philosophical musings and was barely paying attention by the end. If Aira wasn't such a great word painter, I would not have bothered finishing this, even though it barely cracks 100 pages.
Odd, hypnotic Argentinean novel about a caretaker's family living in an under-construction high-rise building haunted by a group of possibly malevolent, entirely naked ghosts. I'm not sure I ever really understood what Aira was building toward with this novel, or what he was ultimately trying to say, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Normally I'm a plot-and-character girl, but somehow, Aira made me enjoy long passages that were simply about, say, a bunch of characters going to the supermarket, or cooking dinner. It's easy to fall under this book's ghostly spell.
not my cup o tea! too many penises not enuff ghosts
A slim novel that ought to be slimmer, as a long philosophical digression interrupts rather than augments the story midway through. This is the rare book that made me turn around and reread it immediately when, toward the end, I suddenly got (or at least came up with my own interpretation of) the symbolism of the ghosts. (Hint: it's not a coincidence that they're all male.) This made me want to go back through the narrative again, which was easy to do as it is so short and so deliciously worded, with complex characters delineated through a few choice descriptors. All told, this is one of the few uses of symbolic realism that have worked for me.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
a really floaty read with some really beautiful passages. i found the form and structure hard to settle into. didn't carte about anything other than aria's philosophical asides
Anlıyorum yazar sınıf farkına dikkat çekmek istemiş ama ben bu hikayeye bir türlü giremedim. Beğenmeyi çok istemiştim oysa...