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Cartea Norilor (2012)

by Chloe Aridjis(Favorite Author)

3.4 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

ALLFA

review 1: Having just returned from my first visit to Berlin, I read with a map of the city on my lap. The city itself is the book's main character, a city where one never knows what ghost from the past may turn up in an improbable place--on the S Bahn or in Alexander Platz. What I'll remember from the book is plot (there's really little of it) or even characters, but specific scenes: the labyrinth of the Holocaust Memorial, the place behind the Hackescher Market where the trams sleep (this ally was just beside my hotel), the Gestopo underground bowling alley (an imagined place that seems another site in the topography of terror).
review 2: Chloe Aridjis's Book of Clouds is a beautifully written short novel of a young foreigner living in Berlin. Her family, who own the ... morelargest Jewish Deli in Mexico City, first visit Berlin when Tatiana, the heroine, is only a teenager. Back then, at a rally protesting the wall, she sees a man she swears is Hitler on the subway, dressed as a 90-year old woman, and surrounded by aged bodyguards. Her family of course never see him, and refuse to believe her. Now a young adult trying to make her way in the world, Tatiana spends much of the time in the city alone--doing transcription work for an aging historian, and dabbling at dating men, but mostly observing the city and its people. The book is atmospheric and much more about feeling and emotion than plot, but the story is engaging nonetheless, particularly in the way it captures the ennui, isolation and displacement of living in a foreign place. Paul Auster is one of the many authors to review it, calling it "A stirring and lyrical first novel by a young writer of immense talent," and Aridjis's writing is somewhat reminiscent of Auster's--captivating, dream-like, surprisingly readable, and somewhat mystical. While the book touches on many important themes, such as how history affects place, and the effects of the German unification on the people of Berlin, it all comes across as fairly superficial, with very little comment or conclusion, or even impact on the character of Tatiana. I would definitely read another book by Aridjis, but hope that future books come together with a bit more weight and substance, and not just style, which she has definitely mastered. less

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