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Shantytown (2002)

by César Aira(Favorite Author)

3.7 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0811219119 (ISBN13: 9780811219112)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

New Directions Publishing Corporation

review 1: Aira writes beautifully. If I understood Spanish better, I would try to read his work in its native language. The back of the book description suggests a violent cop story, but it's much more about a sweet, slow-witted young man and the lives he touches. I noticed a bit of unnecessary repetition, but I'm not sure how much of that came from the translator. And on occasion, I thought I had missed something, but was actually just too impatient. A couple of key characters could have been developed more and developed earlier in the story, but overall I enjoyed it and it was a quick and easy read.
review 2: Maxi, a middle class twenty-something, who has nothing to fill his days except visits to the gym. He begins observing and following the cardboard collectors who m... moreake their rounds daily just minutes before trash is collected. Having lived in Brazil, I also saw people hauling carts around the city center, stacked with cardboard. This book is set in the late 90's, the same time I lived in southern Brazil. Having seen the brilliant Brazilian film Trash, I know that many of the people who scrapped out a living collecting trash, have been left with nothing to gather thanks to recycling. This book that describes Buenos Aires' shantytowns in a way that reduces the threat of the places, and portrays them as full of humanity. An example of some of the enchanting prose is " "The electricity cables, as numerous and chaotic as the buildings they connected, reinforced the shantytown's allegiance to the world of dreams. Man of the residents are migrants from Peru and Bolivia who are illegally living in Argentina. Maxi decides to apply all the strength he has developed by helping the cardboard collectors pull their carts. Each day he comes closer and closer to the shantytown and finally enters it. Maxi, like all the characters in the story, seems to lack social skills and is unable to remember faces. While this isn't named as a disability, it clearly is. Other characters seem unable to figure out the simplest things. The main character is actually a corrupt cop who believes there is another man with the same name,Cabezas,who lives near the shantytown. By the end of the story, we are not sure if there are two Cabezas' or only one. This book is set in 1999, was published in 2001, but only translated to English in 2013. I will be looking for more of César Aria's work. less

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