Book of Clouds

March 2, 2009
Aridjis's lithe debut novel is a brooding, dreamy tale of a young Mexican woman in Berlin, burrowing an escape from the siblings and expectations awaiting her back home. Placing first in a nationwide language exam, university student Tatiana wins a year's room and board in Germany, quickly dissolving into Berlin life ("On some days I felt attached to the city and assimilated, on others like some kind of botched transplant with a few renegade veins") and deciding to stay on when the scholarship runs dry. After a series of odd jobs, Tatiana lands with Dr. Friedrich Weiss, an eccentric historian who needs an assistant to transcribe a number of his "mesmeric" dictations. A loner with a fertile imagination, Tatiana is well-suited to the job, and quickly grows absorbed; Weiss's obsession with Berlin's Nazi and Stasi past dovetails nicely with Tatiana's fascination with the city's underbelly. Ultimately, the characters and landmarks of this ephemeral novel (Tatiana included) never quite emerge from a fog of mystery, making this less a satisfying narrative than a lofty meditation on the power of what's obscured and unknowable.

February 15, 2009
A debut novel concerning a young Mexican woman's lonely sojourn in Berlin.

The opening is a knockout. In 1986 Tatiana's parents take their children on vacation to Europe. After attending a protest against the still-intact Berlin Wall with her family, Tatiana is convinced she sees Hitler disguised as an old woman on a U-Bahn train. Aridjis beautifully captures Tatiana's conflicting sense of certainty and impossibility. In 2002 Tatiana returns to Berlin to study German. Years later, she has settled into an expatriate lifestyle, subsisting off stipends her parents send between jobs. Through family connections she is hired as a transcriber by Dr. Weiss, an elderly historian who specializes in"the phenomenology of space"—how buildings retain the spirit of what went on in them. Obviously, lots of bad things went on in Berlin's buildings. Tatiana spends her days alone with his recorded voice while he works in his study. She spends her nights either traveling the city alone or at home, where noises from the empty apartment above her keep her awake. Dr. Weiss sends her to interview Jonas Krantz concerning a picture Krantz drew as a child in East Berlin. Krantz, now a meteorologist in his 30s, invites Tatiana to a party where she ends up briefly trapped in a former bowling alley and surrounded by ghosts, either Gestapo or Stasi. She tells Weiss that her experience confirms his beliefs about buildings' energies. Krantz wants a real relationship and offers intimacy, but she is not interested—although she does meet her sexual needs with him. After she and Dr. Weiss pay Krantz a visit, they are attacked by thugs. Dr. Weiss is badly injured, but they are saved by a mysterious fog that overtakes the city. Tatiana returns to Mexico. In this novel of ideas, Aridjis and Tatiana's love-hate relationship to physical Berlin (the buildings, the U-Bahn, the bread) is evoked with more emotion than is allowed the human characters who remain bloodless, even skeletal.

A brief, introverted story.

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