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stevendedalus 's review for:
Las reputaciones
by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
A meandering, dreamlike tale which takes a simple premise, which in less capable hands may only have been fodder for a short story, and draws a refractive novella from it, sinking in and out of the past and its main character's thoughts to lend a depth I didn't think possible.
It's almost plotless, just an old political cartoonist remembering a long-ago incident and now unsure of the actual truth and fictions that grew from it.
It is of course poetically structured but very realistically created, avoiding neat twists or reveals or endings. It is as much an evocation as prose can be striving for poetry: the capture of an emotion. I don't know how you'd classify it or figure it but it is beautiful if ephemeral.
It's almost plotless, just an old political cartoonist remembering a long-ago incident and now unsure of the actual truth and fictions that grew from it.
It is of course poetically structured but very realistically created, avoiding neat twists or reveals or endings. It is as much an evocation as prose can be striving for poetry: the capture of an emotion. I don't know how you'd classify it or figure it but it is beautiful if ephemeral.