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Talking To Ourselves: A Novel (2014)

by Andrés Neuman(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0374167532 (ISBN13: 9780374167530)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

review 1: This is a novel that is both quiet and brutal. I appreciated this text immensely because it's one of those works that attempts to answer some universal questions about life - and pulls it off in a strangely modest way. The book follows three characters (mother, father, and son) as they navigate the rough task of loving and living while illness and loss draw nearer and nearer. Each character tells their story through a certain lens and medium, enhancing the novel with unique depth and insight into the characters. I was particularly taken by Elena, the mother who tells her own story by underlining and quoting other authors. This whole novel appears to be her story, though I may just be saying this because her medium (the written word) lends itself best to a novel. She expres... moreses herself with transparency and a fair amount of life experience - something her husband and son lack, respectively.
review 2: This slender novel, really a novella, has quite a punch. The three characters really do talk just to themselves as they react to father Mario's illness and last adventure together with his ten-year old son Lito. Mom Elena lets them have this one last road trip while she worries at home--and has an intense affair with Mario's doctor. Lito's chapters come across best--he is such a smart, innocent kid with his text messages and childish appreciation of the novelty of their trip, who just doesn't quite get the lie the adults are telling him--that his dad just is weak from the flu, not that he's dying. Mario seems like just a Dad, protective of his son. Elena is harder to understand as she over-intellectualizes her guilt and grief with her love of literature. Three unique and separate but intertwined voices facing great loss, resonating with anyone who has ever been with a loved one in final days. less

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