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Loading... How I became a nun (1993)by César Aira
None. This shit is fucked up. See my full review at http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2012/11/review-how-i-became-nun-by-cesar-aira.h... (  )4   bostonbibliophile | Nov 8, 2012 |  An odd little novel. It's easier to say what this novel is not than to say what it is. Lay reviewers have complained at not knowing the sex of the first-person narrator; this seems pointless. The writing is compelling, straightahead, details returning in slightly shifted focus, characters clearly presented with intriguing surfaces if enigmatic depths. Not magic realism; not OuLiPo; not Surrealism. Fast; entertaining. (  ) pieterpad | Jul 17, 2012 | Great beginning, pretty good ending, much of the middle felt like muddle, but it was short enough that it wasn't a fatal detraction. The narrator is a young boy or a young girl--the book keeps shifting as to which it is, with no logic that I could discern--who is born in the provinces around Buenos Aires in the 1930s. The book begins with his/her first taste of ice cream, which is tainted with food poisoning. A poignant scene of the father not understanding why he/she does not like the ice cream is followed by his losing his temper and murdering the ice cream seller. The next scene is the boy/girl recovering in the hospital and the father away in jail. It continues through the first years of school, narrated in a strange stream-of-consciousness way, and ends, as the back cover of the book nicely puts it, "in strawberry ice cream." Based on this and Varamo, the other Cesar Aria book I read, he's a fascinating writer with a lot of upside, but not sure if I'm confident enough of anything else to take the (shallow) plunge again. ( ) jasonlf | Feb 7, 2012 | En este libro breve, el narrador, un nino de seis anos, cuenta una parte de su vida en la que un incidente con un helado de fresa desencadena una serie de sucesos tragicos. El libro esta escrito en clave de humor y en ocasiones la narracion tiene tintes surrealistas o incongruentes que confunden al lector. Por ejemplo, el narrador se refiere a si mismo en genero femenino con frecuencia y a veces no esta claro quien es. Al mismo tiempo es un libro de lectura rapida y no demasiado complicada. (  ) alalba | Jan 10, 2012 | A little novella with a captivating voice and a plot that is full of odd inconsistencies---its narrator (or reality, maybe) can't quite be trusted; it's always a bit off, not quite right, like a portrait that you're not sure but may have blinked just a moment ago. ( )1 jorgearanda | Mar 15, 2011 | no reviews | add a review Is contained in
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0811216314, Paperback)A sinisterly funny modern-day Through the Looking Glass that begins with cyanide poisoning and ends in strawberry ice cream. "My story, the story of 'how I became a nun,' began very early in my life; I had just turned six. The beginning is marked by a vivid memory, which I can reconstruct down to the last detail. Before, there is nothing, and after, everything is an extension of the same vivid memory, continuous and unbroken, including the intervals of sleep, up to the point where I took the veil ." So starts Cesar Aira's astounding "autobiographical" novel. Intense and perfect, this invented narrative of childhood experience bristles with dramatic humor at each stage of growing up: a first ice cream, school, reading, games, friendship. The novel begins in Aira's hometown, Coronel Pringles. As self-awareness grows, the story rushes forward in a torrent of anecdotes which transform a world of uneventful happiness into something else: the anecdote becomes adventure, and adventure, fable, and then legend. Between memory and oblivion, reality and fiction, Cesar Aira's How I Became a Nun retains childhood's main treasures: the reality of fable and the delirium of invention.A few days after his fiftieth birthday, Aira noticed the thin rim of the moon, visible despite the rising sun. When his wife explained the phenomenon to him he was shocked that for fifty years he had known nothing about "something so obvious, so visible." This epiphany led him to write How I Became a Nun. With a subtle and melancholic sense of humor he reflects on his failures, on the meaning of life and the importance of literature. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 04 Jan 2013 01:12:17 -0500) Narrative of childhood experience bristles with dramatic humor at each stage of growing up: a first ice cream, school, reading, games, friendship. The novel begins in Aira's hometown, Coronel Pringles. As self-awareness grows, the story rushes forward in a torrent of anecdotes which transform a world of uneventful happiness into something else: the anecdote becomes adventure, and adventure, fable, and then legend.… (more) |
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