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cnyreader's review
2.0
Some books are written to tell an amazing story. Some books are written to paint amazing pictures with their prose. Some books are written to show off with word play and make the reader's brain work hard. This last group is my least favorite kind, and Larva is a perfect example. I should have taken it as a warning that one of the critics said it was inspired by Finnegan's Wake.
The story (and I use that term loosely) is about a masquerade party in an abandoned mansion in London. A Don Juan character is chasing a masked Sleeping Beauty. We are introduced to character after character and there is an overt sexuality to the whole text (because of Don Juan? perhaps).
Now, the reason I stuck with it and why I can appreciate it (to a point) is because the language and word play is incredibly inventive. Rios regularly blends words together- "serpententrations", "savoraciously" and changes the spelling ("fournication") to convey double meaning. It's clever and witty and funny... and exhausting. Instead of immersing myself in a story, my brain was always working on overdrive. I had to read in small doses and by the end, I just wanted it to be over.
I can imagine the translation of this book took an extraordinary amount of work. I tip my hat to the author and translators.
Food: an all-night pub crawl with everyone speaking at least two languages. It takes some effort even from the beginning, but by the end, it's all a blur.
The story (and I use that term loosely) is about a masquerade party in an abandoned mansion in London. A Don Juan character is chasing a masked Sleeping Beauty. We are introduced to character after character and there is an overt sexuality to the whole text (because of Don Juan? perhaps).
Now, the reason I stuck with it and why I can appreciate it (to a point) is because the language and word play is incredibly inventive. Rios regularly blends words together- "serpententrations", "savoraciously" and changes the spelling ("fournication") to convey double meaning. It's clever and witty and funny... and exhausting. Instead of immersing myself in a story, my brain was always working on overdrive. I had to read in small doses and by the end, I just wanted it to be over.
I can imagine the translation of this book took an extraordinary amount of work. I tip my hat to the author and translators.
Food: an all-night pub crawl with everyone speaking at least two languages. It takes some effort even from the beginning, but by the end, it's all a blur.
chramies's review
4.0
Big-time textuality
This book is called LARVA: Midsummer Night’s Babel, and it’s by Julian Rios. And boy is it weird. The text itself is on right-hand pages only, with footnotes (so to speak) on the left hand pages. The text and notes bounce around through several languages - English, Spanish, Catalan, French, German, Russian - making crossborderal and crossreferencing puns to severely disrail what essentially is a "Don Juan in London" story. I am not sure what the value or use of this is, but why should I be? Occasionally the sustained puns don’t work, when they lapse into essentially being crossword clues: like the inexplicable noisy nun with a pot on her head, which is a crossword clue in Catalan: ‘sor’ (nun) + ‘olla’ (pot) = ‘sorolla’ (noise). The joy of a book like this is spotting the linkages before they arrive, when you just know the author is going to pull a fast one out of the hat somehow; like Kim Newman’s shot-down-airship scene in The Bloody Red Baron where the reader is sure - and is not to be disappointed - that Newman is going to use the Lakehurst Hindenburg disaster footage. Somewhere. What else I hope to get from LARVA I cannot imagine. The act of translating it from the original Spanish must have been terrifying in itself, but there is a note saying that the original and translated forms speak ‘roughly the same language’.
This book is called LARVA: Midsummer Night’s Babel, and it’s by Julian Rios. And boy is it weird. The text itself is on right-hand pages only, with footnotes (so to speak) on the left hand pages. The text and notes bounce around through several languages - English, Spanish, Catalan, French, German, Russian - making crossborderal and crossreferencing puns to severely disrail what essentially is a "Don Juan in London" story. I am not sure what the value or use of this is, but why should I be? Occasionally the sustained puns don’t work, when they lapse into essentially being crossword clues: like the inexplicable noisy nun with a pot on her head, which is a crossword clue in Catalan: ‘sor’ (nun) + ‘olla’ (pot) = ‘sorolla’ (noise). The joy of a book like this is spotting the linkages before they arrive, when you just know the author is going to pull a fast one out of the hat somehow; like Kim Newman’s shot-down-airship scene in The Bloody Red Baron where the reader is sure - and is not to be disappointed - that Newman is going to use the Lakehurst Hindenburg disaster footage. Somewhere. What else I hope to get from LARVA I cannot imagine. The act of translating it from the original Spanish must have been terrifying in itself, but there is a note saying that the original and translated forms speak ‘roughly the same language’.
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