The Conversations

April 28, 2014
The indefatigable Aira’s (The Hare) latest is an excellent place to encounter his logic-defying brilliance for the first time, and will likewise please existing fans. Our narrator starts by recalling his practice of revisiting the day’s conversations every night before falling asleep. In this case, the conversation concerns a movie in which a gold Rolex can be seen plainly adorning the wrist of the actor playing the goatherd. Is it an error on the part of the filmmakers? Or, as the narrator’s friend argues, a portal into a subjective third reality somewhere between real life and film, actor and fictional character? One thing is certain: this telltale watch explodes the differences between the two men and opens up a dazzling inquiry into subjects as far ranging as eastern European political instability, the fragmentary nature of fiction, Kant’s critiques, and the film’s equally oddball plot (featuring mutant algae and feral beauty queens). Short enough to read in a single sitting, this book is, like all Aira’s work, fodder for the kind of late-night speculations that lend themselves to seamless dreaming.

October 1, 2014

An incongruous cinematic scenario sets off a quirky debate about the nature of reality in this latest work by a prolific author of novellas.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2014
In the habit of meeting a friend at a caf' each day for long talks that he replays later in his mind, the narrator of Argentine writer Aira's hybrid title, which melds fiction and reality, has developed a deep and sharp appreciation for conversations and memory. Later, at his leisure, recalling the meandering rhythms of the talks, the narrator reconsiders the circularity of their conversations. He ponders how conversations and memories of conversations overlap with other memories to form a stream of consciousness that erases the boundaries between the individual's thoughts and those of others, a kind of echoing of talk and thoughts, so that, ultimately, it's not clear who said what, whose position has subtly shifted over time, and how sensibilities have blended. The narrator and his friend ponder the incongruities in movies and in life. The impetus to speak and to remember what was spoken, though the same, were charged with distinct and incompatible energies, he observes in this at times hilarious social commentary on the inanities of modern life and the significance of conversation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)