Hi Romance Studiers,

After finishing Valeria Luiselli’s ‘Faces in the Crowd’ and taking a few days to sit with it, I can officially say I got ankle broken. I don’t get it and I wanted to so bad! After watching professor Beasley’s lecture, it did comfort me with one fact, that is that Luiselli intentionally made it this way. While I kinda picked up on the multiple stories intertwined throughout the novel, I struggled at identifying when exactly the story changed. What I didn’t pick up on that was noted in the lecture was the that the Philadelphia side plot was actually another story! Even when stated so bluntly, “the novel, the other one, is called Philadelphia”, where I got ankle broken was how it immediately jumps to the husband side plot where he leaves to Philadelphia (Luiselli, 49). The reason why my inability to understand and analyze this novel makes me so sad is because I found in isolated sections, I really enjoyed this reading. Like many of the books I have read throughout this romance studies course, there were funny bangers and proses throughout.

Unlike the other books though, I did not find many bars but more the scenes depicted throughout the story was very funny. My notes were chalk full of comments on what I found so silly within the story, I think in order to cope with the story’s lack of linear storytelling, it made up in silly situations. Some stand out sections from the novel that I quite enjoyed was when, from what I understand, Maria the main character was being bullied by children for carrying the dead tree. As she was being berated by comments from children, she commented, “they laughed, shamelessly made fun of me: the natural cruelty of children becomes more intense when they are fat” (Luiselli, 25-26). It is such an out of pocket statement and yet so funny, especially when you imagine this grown woman lying to children about taking her dead tree to the tree doctor and the children respond by calling her out on her lies. The other section that really stood out to me in my notes was when she went to Pajarote’s place, who I do not even entirely know if he is real or not, and they have an interesting exchange about feet that overall tripped me up but was so random. The dialogue goes, “These gimcrack paintings are mine. / Who do all the feet belong to? / My ex-wives. / Sorry. / No pro . . . Do you have a card? (That’s what he said: “pro.”) / No. / The young lady has no card! (He was one of those people who speak with exclamation marks.) / Here’s mine . . . If you’ll let me . . . I’ll paint you something . . . (He was one of those people who speak with dot-dot-dots.) / Thanks. / What’s your name? he asked. / Owen. / Isn’t that a man’s name? / Could be. / I’d like to see your feet . . . / My what?” (Luiselli, 59). This whole exchange just had me so confused and yet, a sense of hilarity. The fact that Pajarote does not ask for her name up until this point, when she says Owen and he becomes perplexed, immediately true comboed into “I’d like to see your feet…” is pure comedy (Luiselli, 59).

By the end of the book, I wrote in my notes “I’m convinced she has multiple personality disorder” mainly because I could not understand the novel was switching novels. My question for the class is, what was your ankle breaking moment of this book that had you absolutely laying on the floor looking for a hand from your teammate to help you up? Or did you have a very different experience from my own and was able to gasp the narrative of this story? Let me know in the comments and I look forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts on our last book 🙂