A review by adrianasturalvarez
Fate by Jorge Consiglio
4.0
Read for week three of the Translated Fiction Online Book Club.
Some novels are so short their ideas don't have enough time to sink in. Some are so smoothly written you could miss their inner profundities as you glide quickly over each page to the finish. Unfortunately, unfairly, Fate can be accused of both.
Consiglio writes characters who convincingly come alive on the page with just a few strokes but part of the project of this book is to describe both significant and insignificant (I suppose) details with equal importance. It is amazing the narrative isn't fatally weighed down by this, however, there is a consequence for the reader. When everything is possibly important there is no focus on a single unifying idea that isn't metatextual. I found myself, like the characters, burdened with a struggle to find meaning in a world inundated with little details. Ultimately, this technique conspired to make his cynical little story crushingly depressing.
Some novels are so short their ideas don't have enough time to sink in. Some are so smoothly written you could miss their inner profundities as you glide quickly over each page to the finish. Unfortunately, unfairly, Fate can be accused of both.
Consiglio writes characters who convincingly come alive on the page with just a few strokes but part of the project of this book is to describe both significant and insignificant (I suppose) details with equal importance. It is amazing the narrative isn't fatally weighed down by this, however, there is a consequence for the reader. When everything is possibly important there is no focus on a single unifying idea that isn't metatextual. I found myself, like the characters, burdened with a struggle to find meaning in a world inundated with little details. Ultimately, this technique conspired to make his cynical little story crushingly depressing.