For my final reading this semester, I read “Faces in the Crowd” by Valeria Luiselli. As I am sure many of us can relate, this book was quite confusing and to some extent hard to follow along. I did not seem to get into the book like I hoped to and found myself putting it down often and then picking it up again. This is where the lecture became beneficial as I was able to turn it on to find some flow and motivation to understand the book better. The lecture touched on different ideas such as “folding time” and “burrowing through space” which provided insight into the book. The lecture also clarified how there was potentially more than one novel at play and how there were changing fragments.
Further, I am a reader who has quite a short attention span so the changing narratives (i.e. past and present) in the book and interruptions of other stories had me stressed out. For instance, we see that there are perhaps four different time zones featured in the novel such as the narrator’s younger life, her current life, Owen’s younger self, and Owen looking back to his younger self in the future when he’s older. These switches had my brain working overtime so I hope I captured the time zones correctly as this is a lot for one book. As I am sitting here writing this blog post I’m not sure I have fully understood the novel and I recognize that it is okay because every novel is not easy to comprehend as some are meant to be challenging. Also as Professor Jon has said before, it’s okay if we are confused by a novel or don’t like it. 🙂
Moreover, once I finish reading a novel or watching a film I often think about connections and similar literature. For this novel, the interruptions and the changing fragments in it somewhat reminded me of the book some of us read this semester “If on a Winters Night a Traveller”. For anyone who did not read this book, it was a novel that had many different stories incorporated in one. Although these two books are not the same, the part I drew a connection to was how it felt like there was more than one novel at play. I may seem like a hater of this novel but I did not hate it rather it was just not for me. With that being said, this was not my favourite novel this semester but glad it challenged my thinking.
Discussion Question:
If any, what part of the book did you find the most confusing or hardest to understand?
I like your connection to If on a Winters Night a Traveller. I was also thinking of connections to Agualusa (though I know you read Saramago instead), whose book features a gecko that dreams he’s a man… though it could perhaps be a man who dreams he’s a gecko.
Meanwhile, we’ll try to clarify things further in our discussion on Wednesday. Come with questions! 🙂
Hi! I agree with you on how I really had to lock in to this book to be able to follow the storyline. However, even after finishing it, I still am quite confused on some things. The lecture video definitely cleared up most things for me, and I’m looking forward to the class for when we discuss it further. To answer your question, I feel like the most confusing part for me was when the narrators would switch without a warning which made me have to reread a lot of stuff.
Hi, I feel like the most confusing part of this book was mainly just being able to follow the storyline, the author made this book’s plotline as an abstract collage of fragments, and memory flashes that we have to actively piece together, if not then I feel like the key narrative details are often buried.