Tuesday, September 06, 2005
I actually finished The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia last week but was too overwhelmed by the book and by making sure Daisy and Jeff had made it out of New Orleans okay that I didn't have a chance to write about it. Even now I'm not sure what to say because it eludes simple explanations. Or even convoluted ones. It's an allegory, it's metafiction, it's postmodern... it's ultimately a story about loss and how we react to losing the people we love. I suppose I should give up on coherence. I loved how it played with structure - the blacked out blocks of text, the columns, the cut out name of Liz's new boyfriend, etc. It reminded me a lot of House of Leaves in that sense. I liked the author's story intruding and how we the readers became complicit in the war simply because we were still reading. I felt like it took me a really long time to read but it was actually only a few days. Maybe that reflects the all consuming nature of the story. Anyway. It vaulted into my top 5 of the year and I highly recommend it. Hey! I almost got through the post without mentioning the McSweeney's connection...
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