A review by rknuttel
Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli

3.0

Honestly, this is 2 1/2 stars for me, which I feel like is the lowest I've rated something in a while. I really wanted to like this, but it just didn't work for me. Maybe part of that comes from the fact that I listened to the audio? I'm not sure what the physical book is like, but with the audio it was very difficult to follow what was "real life" and what was the novel that the character was writing. And maybe that's the whole point of the story so it was supposed to be that way. I love a good dash of magical realism, but I found that I couldn't really settle in and enjoy the story because I was never sure what was happening and when and to who. That, combined with the fact that this wanted to be "literary" (which honestly I'm not sure I can totally define, but has something to do with being more about the language than the story and I know I don't like it), made it not really the book for me.