Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.
Cargando... L: And Things Come Apartpor Ian Orti
Ninguno Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.
The final messaging that these characters and their readers are bound up in the usual dance of fiction – real people finding meanings in imagined people – pulls the magic rug from under Orti's weirdly seductive, sharply rendered dream world. Happily, his surging imagination mostly outpaces his impulse to lecture. This strange city and its lost souls don't easily leave the mind.
A small flat sits unoccupied above Henry's café. When a woman comes to rent the room, Henry's world begins an unusual transformation. As they grow closer the city itself is affected, changed, and slowly dismantled. Unsure if he is a victim of his own senility, the chaos inches closer and Henry suspects it may have something to do with the woman upstairs and the stranger she is hiding from. "A haunting novella."--Bookgaga "Read this magical tale for beauty, pure and simple."--The Coast No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNinguno
Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
¿Eres tú?Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing. |
The story is focused on Henry. One cannot help but feel sorry for Henry. He is proprietor of a run down cafe - I would love to say dilapidated but it is difficult to imagine patrons frequenting a food establishment/watering hole in such poor condition - who willingly rents the second floor flat over his cafe to a mysterious woman, known only as L, who shows up in the cafe one rainy evening. As you may guess, Henry is an affable guy who treats the maintenance of his cafe with the same carefree manner as he treats his patrons, moving potted plants under leaks instead of repairing them, always willing to provide patrons with a free drink to appease them and to keep the cafe open until the last patron leaves for the night.
L is a mystery. L is a conundrum. A conundrum that Henry silently welcomes into his life. You see, Henry's wife has taken to entertaining her lovers in their home while Henry is at the cafe. Henry knows all about this, in fact he is certain that one if not more than one of the guests at their dinner table during the party at the start of the story is his wife's lover. The story tends to flash between the dinner party and Henry's experiences at the cafe. Things start to get interesting, in a weird sense, when a construction contractor at the cafe talks about the mysterious overnight completion of renovation jobs he has started and a painter swears to having witnessed a woolly mammoth - yes, the extinct kind - wandering the streets of town. These stories don't phase Henry, although he does become a little unsettled when the furniture in the cafe appears to develop a mind of its own. That is when the story really takes on a surreal, indefinite quality of what is real and what is just a dream.
Orti's novel is different, I will give it that. I had some difficulty piecing together the story for the first 50 pages or so but after that it all started to fall into place, or at least as well as it could considering I really didn't have a handle on what was going on, which was probably the whole point. It is a sleeper of a dark mystery and while I did end up enjoying it, I can see how some readers may toss the book aside with a "what the .....". It is somewhat experimental and a little spartan in places, but, IMO, still worth giving it a try. ( )