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"Following his failure to break into the Hadron Collider and merge with the so-called 'God particle', The Writer from The Invented Part can no longer write or sleep. Instead, he lies awake, imagining and reimagining key moments of his life, spinning out a series of insomniac visions every bit as thought-provoking as they are dreamlike. A mysterious foundation dedicated to preserving dreams, suddenly invaluable in the wake of the dream-eradicating White Plague; a psycho-lyrical-photophobic show more terrorist; an electric and mercurial lullaby; three lunatic sisters (and an eclipsed brother) who write from the darkest side of the most wuthering lunar heights; a hallucinating prisoner and a hallucinatory family; a genius addicted to butterflies and an FBI agent addicted to that genius; a looney and lysergic uncle and parents who model but are not model parents; a revolutionary staging of Shakespeare for the children of chic guerrillas; a city of sleepless bookshops; and a writer who might be 100 years old. Or not." -- Provided by publisher. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Well here we go. Writing a review of a book by Rodrigo Fresan requires a significant amount of chutzpah. What could I add or take away from a writer of such genius?
This was the third book of Fresan's I have read. Once again he uses his creative and insightful gifts to communicate what few other authors can. There is no easy way to say what that something is that he communicates. Perhaps the interior of our consciousness while we grapple with what "is".
Having said all that I can't help adding a few thoughts. Fresan's penchant for following his literary digressions to a pedantic cul-de-sac impair his work as a whole. The digressions are typically brilliant but don't serve the book well. I can't imagine he could find an editor to work show more with but, should he be able to, it could be immensely valuable. Easily 100-150 pages of this work would be best served in their own book.
Nonetheless, a writer of immense talent and genius. show less
This was the third book of Fresan's I have read. Once again he uses his creative and insightful gifts to communicate what few other authors can. There is no easy way to say what that something is that he communicates. Perhaps the interior of our consciousness while we grapple with what "is".
Having said all that I can't help adding a few thoughts. Fresan's penchant for following his literary digressions to a pedantic cul-de-sac impair his work as a whole. The digressions are typically brilliant but don't serve the book well. I can't imagine he could find an editor to work show more with but, should he be able to, it could be immensely valuable. Easily 100-150 pages of this work would be best served in their own book.
Nonetheless, a writer of immense talent and genius. show less
For me, didn't quite reach the heights of the first, but still one of the most brilliant book I have read. Continuously pushing up against the boundary of what a novel is, can be, has been, etc.
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Kirkus Starred Fiction Reviews of Books Published in 2019
411 works; 12 members
Author Information
25+ Works 913 Members
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Distinctions
Series
Common Knowledge
- Original title
- La parte soñada
- Original publication date
- 2017
- Epigraph
- What are dreams?
--Vladimir Nabokov
Ada, or Ardor
The depths of many marvelous moments seen all at once.
--Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five
Each man is given, in dreams, a little perso... (show all)nal eternity which
allows him to see the recent past and the near future. All of
this the dreamer sees in a single glance, in the same way that
God, from His vast eternity, sees the whole cosmic process.
--Jorge Luis Borges
"Nightmares"
It's only in dreams that things are inevitable; in the waking
world there is nothing that cannot be avoided...Let us say, the
present is where we live, while the past is where we dream.
--John Banville
The Blue Guitar and Time Pieces
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream.
--John Lennon & Paul McCartney
"A Day in the Life"
And suddenly it all went black. And that time was gone forever.
--Denis Johnson
Train Dreams
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will
all be changed--in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye.
--The Bible
Corinthians 15:51-52
As night unties the viewer and the view.
--Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire
Part I epigraphs: That Night (Footnotes for an Encyclopedia of Sleepwalkers)
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
--Edgar Allan Poe
"A Dream Within a Dream"
I have dreams of a d... (show all)ensity I would like to bring to fiction.
--John Cheever
Journals
A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper
where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.
--Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities
I think we dream so we don't have to be apart for so long. If we're
in each other's dreams, we can be together all the time.
--A. A. Milne
Winnie-the -Pooh
All men dream, but not equally.
--T. E. Lawrence
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
Dreams are toys.
--William Shakespeare
The Winter's Tale
Part II epigraphs: The Other Night (Irrational Catalog for an Exhibition of Restless Shadows)
I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever
after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and... (show all) through
me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.
--Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
--Charlotte Brontë
The Professor
I love the silent hour of the night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,
Revealing to my charmed sight
What may not bless my waking eyes.
--Anne Brontë
"Poem 14/Night"
The night is cold and loud the blast.
Patrick Branwell Brontë
"Winter-Night Meditations"
I have no objection whatever to your representing me as a little eccentric,
since you and your learned friends would have it so... Had I been
numbered among teh calm, concentric men of the world, I should not
have been as I now am, and I should in all probability never have had
such children as mine have been...Their fun knew no bounds.
--Reverend Patrick Brontë
Letter to Elizabeth Gaskell, July 30th, 1857
More than anything else, however, they had each other.
--Juliet Barker
The Brontës
Part III epigraphs: Tonight (Manual of Last Rites for Waking Dreamers)
Many years have passed since that night.
--Marcel Proust
du côté de chez Swann
There's too much on my mind
There's too ... (show all)much on my mind
And I can't sleep at night thinking about it
--Ray Davies
"Too Much on My Mind"
Don't start me talking
I could talk all night
My mind goes sleepwalking
While I'm putting the world to right
--Elvis Costello
"Oliver's Army"
Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.
--Murasaki Shikibu
The Tale of Genji
There are truths which one can see only when it's dark.
--Isaac Bashevis Singer
"Teibele and Her Demon"
Many years have passed since that night.
--Marcel Proust
Jean Santeuil - Dedication
- For Ana and Daniel:
dreams made reality,
reality made dreams
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 863.64 — Literature & rhetoric Spanish Literature Spanish fiction 20th Century 1945-2000
- LCC
- PQ7798.16 .R395 .P3713 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures Spanish literature Provincial, local, colonial, etc. Spanish America
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 82
- Popularity
- 386,790
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.75)
- Languages
- English, French, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 2
