Faces in the Crowd
“Faces in the Crowd” was not the quick and fun read I was hoping for during finals. It was a messy, convoluted and oft infuriating exercise in patience that felt a little like reading the film Inception. The book centres around the story of a woman living in Mexico City who is writing a (fictional?) autobiography about her younger self in New York City. The novel frequently flips back and forth between the present day and the woman’s story in New York. This younger version of the woman lives a largely care-free lifestyle, working as a reader and translator. She lives unapologetically, going all over the city while meeting new people and pursuing her own creative pursuits. She has all sorts of friends and new and interesting people are constantly coming in and out of her apartment.
This stands in stark contrast to the life in which the author is living today, where she rarely leaves her house and living in an imperfect marriage. It sort of seems as though she longs for what could have been, stating that she cannot get to lost in the fantasy that is her research. Her husband even reads a few of the pages and is concerned, questioning whether the book really is real. There’s also another novel, which made me even more confused, about Gilberto Owen – a Mexican poet and diplomat. She becomes obsessed, completing extensive research.
At one point in the book she mentions to her son that her work is about ghosts. To me, this is a metaphor for the woman’s disappointment with her life and lamentation of lost potential. This book is written as a “horizontal novel, narrated vertically” (69), as the woman wants the story to be told from many different perspectives – all of the different “novels in the novel” are really telling the same story.
While this book gave me a headache, it stands out as one of the most interesting novels that we have read during the course. Bizarre structure aside, the book tells an interesting story about pragmatism and desire. To me, the ghosts seem to represent desire, whether it’s for a different kind of past or infatuation. I think we all have ghosts in some way – I certainly have one haunting me where I wish I wrote this blog post properly the first time around. I can also understand the ghosts being the different storylines and perspectives, with all of the fragments existing simultaneously in a sort of “multiverse”. Maybe that’s a bit too sci-fi esque, but there’s something about this novel that makes me question if its all interconnected somehow.
To leave you all with some questions: Were you able to follow Luiselli’s writing style? Do you have any “ghosts” from your past?
"The novel attentionally sent the novel essentially tries to tell two stories in one book, the of an author living in New York City who is writing a fictional book about her younger self."
ReplyDeleteBut she's not living in New York, is she?
"Because we spend so little time in either of the narratives we never really get to know the characters that the woman encounters in this idealized potentially entirely fictional story."
But this is not true, is it? Can you discuss some of the characters, and what we do get to know about them?
"I wonder if this was symbolic of how she was not able to pursue the past that she wanted and the slim yet endlessly costly possibility of pursuing this “creative” life that she so desperately seems to want."
I'm not sure I understand this... in fact, I would say that Luiselli's writing style is much clearer than yours!
Were you able to follow Luiselli’s writing style? Do you have any “ghosts” from your past?
ReplyDeleteI think her writing style was incredibly clear. I actually was more hooked than in past books. Although she changes of lives with the *, it was clear. Regarding ghosts, I guess we all have people that aren't in our lives anymore?