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lindapatin's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.0
mpaigetet's review
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
A book written by someone that thinks they’re smarter than they are. Interesting topics and had so much potential, but really missed the mark.
to_ilektraki's review
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
graywacke's review
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
I loved this. Literature and life and a dizzying kaleidoscope of cultural clashes and mishmashes. And many beautifully quirky lines. Halfon is a Jewish-born Guatemalan grandson of a Polish Holocaust survivor and writes about himself fictionally or metafictionally, occasionally holding the seams up for us to see.
dismascoale's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
alleeme's review
5.0
I am not really sure how I came across this book other than I must have added it to my library list before going to Guatemala for a month. I can’t decide if it would have been better before Guatemala or if it is nicer after when I perhaps understand something of the cultural melange of a country with 26 living languages.
At first this book seems like a lovely trap. At once completely self-conscious as the narrator of the novel/collection of short stories (reviewers seem conflicted on which this is) shares his name and bio with the author. But it turns out to be too genuine to be a trap.
This is about words and their meanings, how words have beauty in their own right, how they make up the stories we tell other people and the stories we think we know about ourselves. It is about translation and languages. This is the first work of Eduardo Halfon to be translated into English. Quite surprising when you look at his biography and see he actually moved to the US at age 10, stayed here until after college before returning to Guatemala to teach literature (and he now divides his time between Nebraska and Guatemala). Although Halfon can be assumed to be a fluent speaker of English, this book has 5 different translators, all of whom apparently translated this as a work of love wanting to collaborate on bringing Halfon’s words to an English audience rather than compete to be the first one to do so.
Even more intriguing, or perhaps frustrating, is that this is a incomplete work. Halfon has continued these intertwined stories and in more recent translations to other languages has published the most recent additions. I can only hope a second English translation occurs or I finally learn Spanish well enough to read and appreciate this living, breathing work.
At first this book seems like a lovely trap. At once completely self-conscious as the narrator of the novel/collection of short stories (reviewers seem conflicted on which this is) shares his name and bio with the author. But it turns out to be too genuine to be a trap.
This is about words and their meanings, how words have beauty in their own right, how they make up the stories we tell other people and the stories we think we know about ourselves. It is about translation and languages. This is the first work of Eduardo Halfon to be translated into English. Quite surprising when you look at his biography and see he actually moved to the US at age 10, stayed here until after college before returning to Guatemala to teach literature (and he now divides his time between Nebraska and Guatemala). Although Halfon can be assumed to be a fluent speaker of English, this book has 5 different translators, all of whom apparently translated this as a work of love wanting to collaborate on bringing Halfon’s words to an English audience rather than compete to be the first one to do so.
Even more intriguing, or perhaps frustrating, is that this is a incomplete work. Halfon has continued these intertwined stories and in more recent translations to other languages has published the most recent additions. I can only hope a second English translation occurs or I finally learn Spanish well enough to read and appreciate this living, breathing work.