The Restless Supermarket

This is a tough one for me to evaluate. The protagonist, Aubrey Tearle, is a retired proofreader of telephone books in post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa. I assume he's in his early seventies at the time the book opens, pretty spry and has his marbles. When he first retired he started frequenting the Cafe Europa in a shopping mall, that was, for a time, everything he dreamed a cafe could be. He makes some friends, who find his lists (say, of shops with ridiculous names, of buildings named after women, of people with odd names that reflect their work, and so on) and comes up with an idea for creating "A proofreader's derby" that is, writing up a document full of errors and then having a contest. Slowly the group of friends drift show more apart and then the Europa itself changes hands and deteriorates and is now going to close. There will be a closing party and Tearle fantasizes of at last presenting his now finished Proofreader's Derby opus, but instead comes up againt . . . well, you have to read the book. I've rarely read a book where I have felt so constantly jerked in and out of the story because of the quirks and twitches (and glitches) in the text, and something else in the style of writing that I could never quite decide if was the way it was because it's first person and so it is Aubrey Tearle's "voice" or if it was a genuine inconsistency in the writing style itself, fluid and character-driven one moment, and then retreating into verbal fireworks the next. I'd like to give Vladislavic the benefit of the doubt, but I am not entirely convinced that the book itself isn't just a wee bit cleverer than the author could manage to pull off. The flight of fancy that is the text for the Derby was great reading as was most of the last part of the book, although I felt that same confusion reading the final paragraph that haunted the book. I did persevere, I did finish, but I am not sure why. I suspect that this is a book that many other readers would like and I think it has merit. ***1/2 show less

Ivan Vladislavic moet je in het Engels lezen, denk ik. De vertaler doet wat hij kan, maar er gaat in het Nederlands iets van het leesplezier verloren.
Ik deed er lang over. Weken. Ik wijt het aan dat speelse, dat wel door de kieren te betrappen is, maar misschien door de vertaling op een te kleine ruimte is losgelaten.
Het is een allegorie, soms te opzichtig. Maar het boek staat boordevol gekke zijsprongen, kronkels die naar adem doen happen. De proeflezer is niet zo ongrijpbaar als de puzzelfanaat van Perec, laat staan even sympathiek. Maar hij is zo wereldvreemd, dat hij in een boek over een zijn wonden likkend Zuid-Afrika volledig tot zijn recht komt.