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Ghosts

by César Aira, Chris Andrews (Translator)

3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 · rating details · 532 ratings · 105 reviews

“On a building site of a new, luxury apartment building, visitors looked up at the strange, irregular form of the water tank that crowned the edifice, and the big parabolic dish that would supply television images to all the floors. On the edge of the dish, a sharp metallic edge on which no bird would have dared to perch, three completely naked men were sitting, with their...more

Paperback, 139 pages

Published February 24th 2009 by New Directions (first published 1990)

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Candidates for the 2012 Nobel

34th out of 34 books — 30 voters

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira

Best New Directions Books

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Dec 17, 2009 karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: littry-fiction, distant-lands

like so many things in life, this book is visually beautiful, but once you get into it, it disappoints.

the problem it suffers from is that it is way too short to try to keep redefining itself. is it a ghost story? a family story? a class story? the meditation on chilean/argentinian conflict and integration? a series of philosophical musings? the story of young girl's emotional entree into sexuality and adulthood? the problem is it tries to do it all. remember when michael jordan played baseball?...more

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Jun 28, 2011 Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars

A patient, dense, even-handed/sane, attentive, purposefully naturalistic short novel populated by what seems like many undercharacterized characters milling about and talking in paragraphless dialogue as naked manly ghosts hover around and sometimes piss in arcs that produce rainbows with a metallic sheen. Excellent active ending: like a methodical, casually eddying river that suddenly accelerates toward its catarata. Aira really shifts from static dense atmospherics to electrified sprints. A tr...more A patient, dense, even-handed/sane, attentive, purposefully naturalistic short novel populated by what seems like many undercharacterized characters milling about and talking in paragraphless dialogue as naked manly ghosts hover around and sometimes piss in arcs that produce rainbows with a metallic sheen. Excellent active ending: like a methodical, casually eddying river that suddenly accelerates toward its catarata. Aira really shifts from static dense atmospherics to electrified sprints. A tricky, shifty writer who throws changeups -- that is, intentionally slows things down, manifests some serious density, so a faster sentence jumps out that much quicker in comparison: "He was letting his thoughts show in that gentle, docile way because sleepiness was overcoming him irresistibly. And both aspects of his excuse were reasonable, in a way. The mood of summery exhibitionism prevailing on the site, accentuated perhaps by the imperfect, deceptive repetition from one floor to the next, didn't shock Patri (even she wasn't that naive) so much as intrigue her. She's seen the gang of ghosts shaking their sturdy members and aiming the jets of urine at the sky, showering it over the first-floor patio (their favorite place for this sport) until rainbows with a metallic sheen appeared in the siesta's white glare. The day the big satellite dish was installed on the terrace, they spent hours doing it, perched on the edge." Political suggstions re: Chile/Argentina I didn't quite register enough to associate the ghosts or the building etc. But I liked how this sort of South American "magical realism" is concrete instead of verdant relentless fornicating flora and fauna, hyperbolically flowing prose saturated with the streaking plummage of a quetzal in flight -- in this, the tone is stable gray, the surfaces of the luxury apartment building are concrete, the ghosts are covered in a sort of concrete powder/dust and pretty much keep their distance. You can tell this book by its cover.(less)

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Aug 30, 2008 jeremy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: translation, fiction

césar aira, the argentine novelist, has authored over two dozen novels, yet this is only the third to be translated into english (an episode in the life of a landscape painter & how i became a nun being the others). ghosts initially piqued my interest after i noticed it was a forthcoming release from one of the world's finest publishers, and then because i learned that the late roberto bolaño was an admirer of his work. stylistically i found aira's writing satisfying and his plot intriguing,...more

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Jan 19, 2010 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: three-percent

This was one of my favorite reads of 2009; I've just read it again so it may be one of my favorites of 2010, too. With gentle, clear-eyed humor the novel(la?) recounts the events at a luxury condo building, still under construction, on the last day of the year: the owners' meetings with the architect and various interior designers, the construction workers' boozy barbeque once the half-holiday begins, and finally, after naps and trips to the grocer's, the New Year's Eve party of Raul Viñas and h...more

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Jul 06, 2012 míol mór rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: finished, on, nov, 15, 2011, 900, humour, hispano-america, ghosts, cabaret, bisanzio

Nel 1931 Victoria Ocampo fond�� a Buenos Aires la rivista Sur, che contava Borges e Bioy Casares tra i collaboratori e divent�� un punto di riferimento per la letteratura latinoamericana. Sembra volersi rifare a questa tradizione l��omonima casa editrice italiana, che inaugura il proprio catalogo con tre titoli argentini.

I fantasmi di C��sar Aira �� il secondo e, per ora, il pi�� eccentrico. Chi gi�� conosce l��autore non se ne stupir��; chi invece non avesse mai letto uno degli oltre settanta...more

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Jun 02, 2013 Joseph rated it 4 of 5 stars

I find it nearly impossible to describe a César Aira novel. This is because his effects operate in mysterious ways, somehow underneath plot and characterization. But let me nutshell Ghosts without spoiling the arc, which begins in a typically wandering Airaesque way before firming up and acquiring the character of Fate.

Raúl Viñas and his family live on the site of a luxury condominium building under construction. This is because Raúl, in addition to working on the site, has been engaged by the b...more I find it nearly impossible to describe a César Aira novel. This is because his effects operate in mysterious ways, somehow underneath plot and characterization. But let me nutshell Ghosts without spoiling the arc, which begins in a typically wandering Airaesque way before firming up and acquiring the character of Fate.

Raúl Viñas and his family live on the site of a luxury condominium building under construction. This is because Raúl, in addition to working on the site, has been engaged by the builder to keep an eye on things around the clock. The family’s accommodations, like the building itself, are unfinished—missing walls, staircases with no bannisters, faucets that operate only one at a time (turn on two at once and no water at all comes out). Like the Viñases, the reader inhabits a space of transition. The sense of transition is heightened by the fact that the story takes place on the last day of the year, when the normal round of daily activities has yielded to the fluid conditions of a day given over to preparations for a New Year’s celebration that, in the end, brings the extended Viñas family together. I should add that the family are exiles (the Viñases are Chileans who years before had come to Buenas Aires for work), and as such exist as though suspended in a state of permanent transition: they live in Argentina but hold tightly to their Chilean character, and although their lives are more or less happy, they are beset by nostalgia. In this twilight state, neither the family nor the reader is particularly surprised that the construction site is haunted. Yes, there are ghosts—all male, all naked, reputedly gay—who are also (it seems) planning a New Year’s party, though in the end it turns out to be more of a cruel ruse than a celebration.

Now, all this does very little to convey the experience of reading Ghosts. Aira constantly mixes the quotidian with the marvelous as if they were one and the same—and maybe they are. In any case, he frequently interrupts his straightforward narrative to pry the tops of our heads off and let some fresh light in. Here’s one small example—a glimpse into the mind of the teenage girl Patri, who is even more exiled than her family, being the daughter of a father who vanished before she was born:

By nature she was particularly taciturn, but this predicament helped her to see the usefulness of speaking. When you speak, you automatically stop thinking; it’s like being released from a contract. Or rather, as she said to herself, it’s like those stories in which an especially handsome man appears, to whom the virile protagonist feels inexplicably attracted, which he finds disturbing, understandably, until it is finally revealed that the handsome man is in fact a woman in disguise. Such is the dialectic of thinking and speaking.

In the end, Ghosts is not a ghost story at all, but a meditation on human visibility and invisibility, speech and silence, family and isolation. It’s among best by Aira I’ve read so far, almost as excellent as An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (hence the 4 as opposed to 5 stars). I have to add, though, that I've loved and felt illuminated by every encounter with the uncanny Argentine genius from Coronel Pringles.(less)

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Feb 10, 2013 Christopher rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This is more of a meditation on architecture, family, conviviality, and existence than a ghost story or even a magical realist story, because the ghosts barely appear until the last 1/4 of the story, although they're certainly relevant to the main events in that portion.

It was nice--except for the ending, which was a bit of a gut-punch. It's New Year's Eve Day, and the tempo of the story has that half-day vacation feeling: slow, relaxed, not too excited, but easing into an expected event. There...more

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Oct 13, 2012 Trevor rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was my first Aira (I am now a devoted fan). Knowing how prolific Aira was caused me to approach his work with skepticism. How can someone put out so many books and maintain high quality?

I’m not sure, but I think his speed at writing is a strength, lending this novel a swift looseness and experimental quality I haven’t seen much before. In a way, it shows that Aira respects his reader. He’s having an intellectual conversation, and he trusts his readers to come along and see where it takes u...more This was my first Aira (I am now a devoted fan). Knowing how prolific Aira was caused me to approach his work with skepticism. How can someone put out so many books and maintain high quality?

I’m not sure, but I think his speed at writing is a strength, lending this novel a swift looseness and experimental quality I haven’t seen much before. In a way, it shows that Aira respects his reader. He’s having an intellectual conversation, and he trusts his readers to come along and see where it takes us. Indeed, his writing process is one of almost experimental freewriting. He has said he sits down at a cafe and writes a page. When he is done, he leaves. Apparently, the next day, rather than editing what he has written, he forges ahead, finding some way to move the story out of any corners he’s backed himself into. That said, this novel looks as polished as anything else out there, and the themes carry from the first page to the last in a march forward that makes it seem planned from the get-go.

This short book (139 pages) takes place in one day, December 31, on the construction site of a luxury condominium. In the morning the new tenants visit to see how construction is going; the condo was supposed to be finished that day. We are then fortunate enough to read a nice run down of the rest of the day, as the family who has lived on top of the condominium during its construction (the husband is in charge of security) prepares for the New Year’s Eve party. In its own way, the book resembles Mrs. Dalloway, moving steadily through the day, moving in and out of the head of one of the characters.

At the beginning of the book, we don’t know what character is going to be central because Aira introduces several candidates. As we move around in these minds, every once in a while Aira throws in a description of the ghosts who live on the site, seen only by some of the individuals. These descriptions are placed in the text as if the presence of the ghosts are ordinary:

"So Raúl Viñas was keeping fourteen bottles of red wine cool, with a system he had invented, or rather discovered, himself. It consisted of resolutely approaching a ghost and inserting a bottle into his thorax, where it remained, supernaturally balanced. When he went back for it, say two hours later, it was cold. There were two things he hadn’t noticed, however. The first was that, during the cooling process, the wine came out of bottles and flowed like lymph all through the bodies of the ghosts. The second was that this distillation transmuted ordinary cheap wine, fermented in cement vats, into an exquisite, matured cabernet sauvignon, which not even captains of industry could afford to drink every day."

Soon the book’s narration settles on Patri, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the squatters. She is the character who confronts the ghosts the most, and she is the mind in which Aira explores most of the book’s themes. The ghost, in a way, can represent a sort of liminal space, occupying the boundary between life and death. However, here the liminal space is the boundary between what is real and unreal, or, as Aira puts it once, what is built and unbuilt.

"But there is always a difference between dreams and reality, which becomes clearer as the superficial contrast diminishes. The difference in this case was reflected in the architecture, which is, in itself, a reciprocal mirroring of what has already been built and what will be built eventually. The all-important bridge between the two reflections was provided by a third term: the unbuilt."

In a great segment, during the siesta, Patri’s mind chases the space between architecture and literature, some related concepts between the Pygmies and Australian Aborigines. It’s a great intellectual game. But the game is not all this book has. Patri’s interest in the ghosts worries her mother.

"The only thing that bothered her was the bad influence the ghosts might have on her children, particularly on her frivolous elder daughter. Since Patri was given to building castles in the air, certain chimerical spectacles could lead her to the the utterly misguided belief that reality is everywhere."

And Patri’s mother should be worried. Aira keeps us interested in the intellectual puzzles and Patri’s wellbeing all the way to the end, when the fireworks mark the new year.(less)

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Aug 17, 2012 Tom Lichtenberg rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: latin-american-literature, twenty-first-century-literature

Ghosts is a narrative that meanders through the consciousness of a series of characters related to the construction of a luxury condominium highrise in Buenos Aires. The building is half-finished, and we follow the everyday actions and flickering thoughts of its future occupants, then the builders and work crew, and finally the family of the night watchman, who live on the site, an occupation that may seem strange to Western readers but is quite common in most of the world. This family becomes t...more Ghosts is a narrative that meanders through the consciousness of a series of characters related to the construction of a luxury condominium highrise in Buenos Aires. The building is half-finished, and we follow the everyday actions and flickering thoughts of its future occupants, then the builders and work crew, and finally the family of the night watchman, who live on the site, an occupation that may seem strange to Western readers but is quite common in most of the world. This family becomes the main story, especially the mother and eldest daughter, as they go about cooking, cleaning, shopping and minding the children while their menfolk get drunk, nap a while, then get wasted again to celebrate the new year. As with other Cesar Aira books, the reader must let go and truly 'follow' the writing. Let go of rules, expectations, habits and preconceived notions of even what a story is, or should be. Aira is a subtle writer, and always full of surprises.

The ghosts in the story serve several purposes, and by no means have I sussed them all out. I only have my own interpretations. It's interesting that they are all, or almost all, men - naked men with prominent penises. That's got to mean something, especially to the adolescent girl at the heart of the tale and her mother, who insists on finding a 'real man', whatever that means. But the ghosts can also be seen as 'unbuilt' characters, individuals who have their own story but are not at present being written about. The main characters in the book are not ghosts, but only because the author has chosen to build them, to bring them into life. There is a fine line between them and the ghosts, one which is easily crossed. Some of the characters in the early part of the book become ghosts, in a sense, by the end, after they've gone from the story and only linger in the reader's mind, such as the young man with the long hair.

The characters in this book are generally the kind of people who don't often get written about - they are immigrants, poor people, marginal in the society they find themselves in. In the consciousness of the locals, they are unbuilt, often invisible. In this world, ghosts like them are all around us all the time. The book brings them alive for us, for a moment, and isn't this the great power of literature? (less)

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Dec 31, 2011 Evan rated it 3 of 5 stars

I actually enjoyed this book more than the 3 rating suggests. The rating I think mainly reflects a lack of smoothness in the translation that made reading a little tough going. The novel uses ghosts as an organizing metaphor for discussing the lives of squatters in an unfinished luxury apartment building in Buenos Aires. Curious to me that the book was published in 1990, shortly before the massive collapse of the Argentine economy and failure of its neo-liberal policies. Perhaps things were alre...more I actually enjoyed this book more than the 3 rating suggests. The rating I think mainly reflects a lack of smoothness in the translation that made reading a little tough going. The novel uses ghosts as an organizing metaphor for discussing the lives of squatters in an unfinished luxury apartment building in Buenos Aires. Curious to me that the book was published in 1990, shortly before the massive collapse of the Argentine economy and failure of its neo-liberal policies. Perhaps things were already this bad, perhaps Aira already saw the writing on the wall, I don't know enough about Argentina to say. But it resonated with my experience of post-Suharto Jakarta, which is filled with unfinished apartment buildings abandoned after the Asian monetary crisis, and with urban poor squatters who live out their lives in the shadows of such jarring opulence. The thing about this novel that seems entirely right to me, thinking from Jakarta, is that there is virtually no distance between ghosts and everyday life. There is no room in this environment for the distance we rich Westerners imagine between ourselves and death. These people live amongst the dead, right on top of the dead, are stacked in layers in these buildings with the dead all around. So these dead are not unfathomably supernatural, possessed of incredible powers and horrific complexions like our undead. Rather, they are the same as the living poor, just with their tethers to the phenomenal world lengthened a bit. They float, its true, but seem incapable of leaving-- less free than our living poor even. They all appear a bit insane, but not in some universe-rending way like East Asian hungry ghosts. Rather, they seem like a community of devotees of Diogenes, given to public nudity and obscure provocations. These dead do not ascend or descend; neither, as ghosts, do they wreak their vengeance upon the living. They have simply entered another plateau of madness. A very effective vision of the prison of urban poverty, I think. I wish my Spanish were good enough that I could read the original. (less)

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Sep 28, 2011 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: argentina, fantasy-horror

When you read a novel by César Aira, you never have any idea what is going to happen next. Nothing is really foreshadowed: It just unfolds according to its own rules and takes you to surprising places.

Like a Buenos Aires luxury apartment building with a rooftop pool that is in the final stages of construction -- in the middle of a heat wave. It is New Year's Eve, and because December 31 in Argentina is like the Northern Hemisphere's June 30, it is one of the longest days of the year.

The action c...more

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May 07, 2011 Andrew Carlson rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is interested in what Lisa Robertson would call "soft architecture": a contract laborer's family lives in the fancy condo he's working on. When it's done, they'll move out and rich people will move in. In the mean time, the building functions in a different way. Some of the fixtures are uninstalled. Also, ghosts come and go at will. So there's this kind of haunted or haunting intermediate stage in the building's life, where the rote utility of home hasn't yet obscured something phenome...more

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Mar 26, 2011 Nick Tramdack rated it 3 of 5 stars

At the time I read this, the only book I'd read by Cesar Aira I'd was An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter. For me, Ghosts wasn't quite as enjoyable; the plot seemed loaded toward the back of the story and somewhat disjointed, as if it had been made up as the author went along. I later found out that this was the case. Aira composes all his novels forward, without rewriting, an interesting technique to say the least. So maybe we should be surprised Aira's novels are as enjoyable as they...more At the time I read this, the only book I'd read by Cesar Aira I'd was An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter. For me, Ghosts wasn't quite as enjoyable; the plot seemed loaded toward the back of the story and somewhat disjointed, as if it had been made up as the author went along. I later found out that this was the case. Aira composes all his novels forward, without rewriting, an interesting technique to say the least. So maybe we should be surprised Aira's novels are as enjoyable as they are!

There's not a lot to say about the plot of Ghosts. What's more, as with so many discursive contemporary novels, it's hard to even talk about what the book's about without boiling it down to a list of themes or events... a move which resembles writing copy for a dust jacket, a move which inevitably distorts and inflates and suppresses. So I think the best move is simply to quote Aira. If you like these lines, you might like the book.

37: "He was an insignificant person, without any noteworthy characteristics."

45: "She knew every one of her children's toys."

46: "...If people started multiplying rooms by their needs, they could float away into the infinite and never touch the ground of reality again. One for sewing, another for embroidery; one for eating, one for drinking, one for each activity, in short. The same room reproduced over and over, each one fulfilling some silly requirement, as if in a perpetually receding mirror. Her mother had put it very well, except that she hadn't gone far enough in her generalization. Because the illusion of exhaustivity affected things as well as people. In any case, the children weren't there."

67: [at the end of the dream-sequence which is an excuse for Aira to talk about anthropology, architecture, and dreaming], Patri's dream: "Suddenly a wind, a typical dream-wind, so typical that dreams might be said to consist of it, arose and blew the building apart, reducing it to little cubes the size of dice. This was the transition to the world of cartoons."

105: "Perhaps they were traveling at an incredible speed, traversing worlds, and she was in a position from which that movement could not be perceived."(less)

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Jan 11, 2010 Matthew Snope rated it 3 of 5 stars

Hmmm. Not sure what to make o' this one. It reads more like a long short story or a novella. The author does a good job capturing the humanity of a Buenos Aires family, and I think a good job capturing the psyche of the matriarchs of the family, but I'd find it hard for someone to disagree that the story is slooooooooooooow, especially since the main event of the story takes place on the very last two pages of a 137 page story. However, Aira creates valid suspense leading up to those two pages,...more

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Jul 22, 2009 jess rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, fiction

It is New Years Eve and a Chilean family is preparing to celebrate with family and friends. The book is set almost entirely in an unfinished luxury high rise in Argentina, where the Vinas family stays during a short-term job assignment (security detail for the building). The condo is also haunted by a collection of nude male ghosts. The oldest daughter, Patri, is invited to a party that will cost her her life. Can her mother's love save her? Does she need to be saved? The story is creepy, even a...more

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Apr 30, 2009 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

This small novel from the hand of the contemporary Argentinian writer Cesar Aira is one of those enjoyable reads that leaves one (me?) more than a little perplexed. Set in a single day, it is the story of Chilean construction workers living with their families on the site of a luxury condominium they are building for wealthy Argentines in Buenos Aires. Ghosts, all male, haunt the site and are hardly noticed by anyone except one worker's fifteen-year-old daughter, who is fascinated by their nudit...more

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Mar 30, 2011 Aquavit rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

This book is really difficult to pin down. Partly, it is a magical realism tale where the gigantic divide between wealth and poverty is populated by ghosts (though he also talks about the middle class being the only bridge between the incredulity that each extreme has for the other). Partly it is a philosophical treatise - he creates a kind of Venn diagram between Reality and Imagination (where the two don't overlap). He explains this diagram by talking about architecture - examples include Joyc...more

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Feb 21, 2010 Jimmy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: argentina, male, novel, year-1990s, all-in-a-day

Everything belonged to the children. The expansion produced by the measurements and the feeling of contraction that goes with fear were overlaid by the world of childhood. The real universe is measured in millimeters, and it is gigantic. p. 4

Plot: A Chilean family lives temporarily on the roof of a half-built (and otherwise uninhabited) condominium building. The story takes place during the course of a day: New Years Eve. The family gathers for a siesta to celebrate. Meanwhile there are ghosts,...more Everything belonged to the children. The expansion produced by the measurements and the feeling of contraction that goes with fear were overlaid by the world of childhood. The real universe is measured in millimeters, and it is gigantic. p. 4

Plot: A Chilean family lives temporarily on the roof of a half-built (and otherwise uninhabited) condominium building. The story takes place during the course of a day: New Years Eve. The family gathers for a siesta to celebrate. Meanwhile there are ghosts, fat and naked and covered in a fine uniform white dust, that float about in the formation of the hands of a clock, or just hanging out by the dumpster; sometimes they laugh vigorously. They tempt one of the older daughters to join them in their party, the one the ghosts are holding at midnight. But she would, of course, have to be dead first.

Review: The high-points in the book are considerably great, although over-all, I'd say this is second-rate Aira. You should read An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter first, as that one is filled with greatness, and How I Became a Nun next as that one is also very good. Here, I felt like the blending is not working as well for him. The philosophy sticks out too much as Philosophy (with a capital P) rather than just part of the fabric of the whole book. (I love his philosophizing in his other books, because they were just one or two lines tossed out, almost as an aside, very illuminating yet kind of light and joyful). The surreal/ridiculous parts (i.e. ghosts and such) also seem to stick out instead of working together with the mundane. Overall, I felt a little bored through some sections, whereas in other Aira books I felt constantly (and pleasantly) surprised.

Also, NDP needs to do better copy editing. I found at least 10 minor spelling or grammatical errors in this short book. Although, to be fair, they did a GREAT job with the book and cover design.

Each of them seized a car; although the cars were identical, there was an obvious advantage in being able to choose while the other two children were asleep. What a surprise they would get, poor suckers, when they found they could only choose between the two remaining toy cars, which were indistinguishable from the others! p.79(less)

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Jul 10, 2009 Carolyn rated it 3 of 5 stars

"Ghosts" follows the Vinas family through the last half of their New Year's Eve as they prepare to host a family party in a not-yet-completed apartment building in an unnamed city in Argentina. Raul Vinas is the caretaker and worker on the building as it is erected. He and his family live in one of the partially constructed units, the children running up and down the bannister-less stairs, in and out of the half-completed apartments (I kept thinking of a sort of human Habitrail). Oh, and there a...more "Ghosts" follows the Vinas family through the last half of their New Year's Eve as they prepare to host a family party in a not-yet-completed apartment building in an unnamed city in Argentina. Raul Vinas is the caretaker and worker on the building as it is erected. He and his family live in one of the partially constructed units, the children running up and down the bannister-less stairs, in and out of the half-completed apartments (I kept thinking of a sort of human Habitrail). Oh, and there are also various naked male ghosts who nonchalantly walk in and out of their lives on a daily basis, prompting extreme curiosity on the part of Patri, Raul's eldest (step)daughter, but few answers. The story in large part concerns Patri's interaction with the ghosts, with her mother, and with her choice of paths in life.

Cesar Aira's writing seems effortless, almost conversational, and like a conversation, it can wander a bit. (He is said to walk to his favorite cafe each day, sit down and write a page, and consider his work done for the day. Repeat 100 or so days, and Aira's novel is complete.) For example, here's part of his multi-page discussion of architecture as art:

"The architectural key to the built/unbuilt opposition, which analogies fail to capture, is the flight of time toward space. And dreaming is that flight . . . Except in fables, people sleep in houses. Even if the houses hadn't yet been built. And therein, perhaps, lies the origin, the original cell, of the sedentary life. While habits, whether sedentary or nomadic, are made of time, dreams are time-free. Dreams are pure space, the species arrayed in eternity. That exclusivity is what makes architecture an art. Beyond this point, the timeless mental material of the unbuilt is detached from the field of possibility, ceases to be the personal failure of an architect whose more daring project stalled for want of backing, and becomes absolute. Even the mixture of the built and unbuilt becomes absolute."

"Ghosts" is about reality and unreality, the built and unbuilt, time and eternity, but for me there were more questions than answers. Most conversations within the Vinas family are a combination of familiarly banal family chit-chat and fairly dense philosophical issues. It's a short book, filled with plenty of pleasant vignettes of family life, but it left me pretty unsatisfied in the end. But maybe that's understandable, given what Aira writes toward the end of the book:

"Knowledge comes through the novels, of course, but not really from them. They are not the ground; you couldn't expect them to be. They're suspended in the void, like everything else. But there they are, they exist; you can't say that it's a complete void."

By the way, this is the third or fourth book I've read in the past year translated from the Spanish, and each one has Chilean characters who are regarded with a sort of mystical "otherness" by fellow South Americans and by Mexicans. It's really got me curious about the root of this phenomenon.

(less)

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May 27, 2009 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars

I took more pleasure from holding this book than I did from reading it. It is this compact thin book with a simple gray cover. Even just opening it is daunting: 136 pages of prose, with few paragraph breaks and very little dialogue.

"Ghosts" by Cesar Aira is the story of a Chilean family that is living on the site of what will be luxury condos in Argentina. The seven-story building also houses tons of naked male ghosts, who float from floor to floor and perch in unlikely places and spend a lot o...more

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Apr 09, 2009 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars

A creepy ghost story with a brief essay on cross-cultural art and architecture for its intermission. This builds a careful pace and a highly realistic tone, breaks it at will for ontological digressions, and then cuts right back to daily life like nothing happened.

Characters feel at points like real people and at others like symbolic mouthpieces for the author's world view. But said view is restless and engaging, and the blend never strays wholly to one or the other. .

Book reads a little like a...more

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Nov 07, 2009 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: x2009-november, 2009, contemporary-fiction

A short, shivering work about one New Year's Eve at a condo construction site in Buenos Aires. The ghosts of the title are a device used to lead the protagonist, a teenage girl named Patri, through a very rapid discovery of the reality of the adult world. Aira packs in many insights, most poignantly arguing that even the simplest, most uneducated person can find deep philosophical truth through living. In the end, though, the ghosts chill you even on the piercingly hot day the novel is obsessed...more

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Jun 08, 2011 Brent Legault rated it 4 of 5 stars

The terrible (because it's hackneyed) and accurate (because it's ever so accurate) adjective unornamented froths up from somewhere when I think of how to describe Aira's steady style that rarely has anything to do with a metaphor or a simile, that seems, in fact, to scorn such "tricks." It's the kind of style that can be a little dull-edged and doe-eyed in the hands of an amateur. But Aira is no amateur and his plain speaking serves him well when he drops the mention of a ghost here or a ghost t...more

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Jul 22, 2009 Julie Failla Earhart rated it 4 of 5 stars

Cesar Aira has more than seventy books to his credit, is considered one of Argentina’s greatest writers, but is not that well known in the English-speaking world. Only three of his books have been translated and published for English-only speakers. I was intrigued by a review a read of Ghosts. I love a good ghost story. But the ghosts here are not what I was expecting.
The story revolves around the Raul Vinas and his family, squatters who live on the unfinished floor of seven-story luxury condos...more Cesar Aira has more than seventy books to his credit, is considered one of Argentina’s greatest writers, but is not that well known in the English-speaking world. Only three of his books have been translated and published for English-only speakers. I was intrigued by a review a read of Ghosts. I love a good ghost story. But the ghosts here are not what I was expecting.
The story revolves around the Raul Vinas and his family, squatters who live on the unfinished floor of seven-story luxury condos under construction. The ghosts are seen by everyone on the construction, from the workers to the smallest child of Raul and his wife. No one seems bothered by the naked men coated in a fine layer of dust who seem to sit and watch what is going on. In fact, Raul uses them to refrigerate his wine: “It consisted of resolutely approaching a ghost and inserting a bottle into his thorax, where it remained, supernaturally balanced. When he went back for it, say two hours later, it was cold.”
The entire story takes place on New Year’s Eve. Raul and the construction workers are working until noonish. Then they have plenty of time to rest before the evening’s celebration. In Buenos Aries, it’s a scorching hot summer day. The heat is almost unbearable on the building’s rooftop, but the family learns to make the best of it. They are grateful that the work is behind schedule so they don’t have to find a new place to live.
As the afternoon progresses, the plot’s focus shift’s from the family in general to the eldest daughter, Patri. She begins interact with the ghosts and wants to join them at their party. Unfortunately, she would have to be dead to do so.
American readers might have a tough time with Ghosts. Not because the story line is difficult; it’s quite clear and entertaining. The difficulty could arise in the story’s format. There are no page breaks or chapters. The only quotation marks that are used is when the ghosts speak, so sometimes it’s hard to know who is talking. It’s a wonderful little story.
Review originally appeared on www.armchairinterviews.com
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Apr 07, 2009 Dave-O rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

A poetic, grand, magic realist story about a New Year's Eve celebration held by a working-class Chilean family at an Argentinian construction site. Aira is sweeping at first as he ruminates human behavior as it reflects the everyday concerns of his characters. The tiniest detail opens up a universe of thought and reflection and often some kind of truth.

The Viñas family lives and works in a haunted condo development. The ever-present nude male ghosts enter and exit as they please, though they ar...more

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Oct 09, 2012 Jim Elkins rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: argentine

Stupendous, like everything of his I've read. As far as I can tell there are only five things in English: four novels, and a chapter chosen by Roberto Bola�o in an anthology. Aira has no competitors in contemporary Latin American fiction.[return][return]When have you ever read -- when will you ever read again -- a ghost story in which the ghosts don't really want anything, in which some people care and others don't, in which most ghosts are naked overweight men covered with white construction du...more

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Nov 03, 2011 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-fiction

Of the three Aira novels I've read, I like this one the least. There is some beautiful writing here, and Aira does a great job exploring the ways in which a particular space reverberates with the specter of what was once there ( or not there), what exists there now, and what will exist ( or not) in the future, where time is the force that binds these visions together. The same can be said for people - what they were, what they are, and what they will be in the future. The ghosts are a nice artis...more

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Sep 23, 2011 Tara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: translation, personal-library, paperback, favorites

My initial impulse was to give Ghosts, by Cesar Aira, 4-5 stars based solely on the writing. Aira's prose is beautiful. His writing is graceful and his sentences clean. There is a 3-dimensional quality to the way he builds his story. Not cinematic, which has become overused. Ghosts is, in my opinion, more suited to a play. The descriptions and settings have physical volume. (This is the first book I've read by this author and I'm curious to find another. Because the style seems so perfectly matc...more My initial impulse was to give Ghosts, by Cesar Aira, 4-5 stars based solely on the writing. Aira's prose is beautiful. His writing is graceful and his sentences clean. There is a 3-dimensional quality to the way he builds his story. Not cinematic, which has become overused. Ghosts is, in my opinion, more suited to a play. The descriptions and settings have physical volume. (This is the first book I've read by this author and I'm curious to find another. Because the style seems so perfectly matched to this particular story - set in a luxury condo building under construction, and still missing some walls & windows).

Ghosts is about the building and its inhabitants: workers, architects, the buyers waiting to move in, their designers, the caretaker & his family... and the ghosts. Bald, naked men covered in fine white powder (they reminded me of a nudist Blue Man Group) who have the presence of a Greek chorus but the mannerisms of a circus clown troupe. At the center is the drunken caretaker and his family, gathered together to celebrate the New Year on the roof. We learn about his family, particularly his daughter Patri, over the course of a single day leading up to and culminating in the family party / tragedy. Because like any good ghost story there must be some tragedy.

As mentioned, I loved the writing. The plot deflated by the end. I'd compare it to a jazz standard in the hands of a musician who twists and molds it into something unique, but on the whole still recognizable to his audience. Until the end, where he goes on some tangent, an experimental jazz solo, which not only bears no relation to the standard - it's barely music. Aira goes into that kind of tangent at the book's end - when Patri's mother is trying to explain to her the importance of "real" men and why ghosts aren't virile. I couldn't help feeling that this conversation was key to the story - and still I couldn't in a million years explain what she was talking about. That's why I say the plot deflated and I found the story uneven.

I still enjoyed & recommend the book. If readers view Ghosts solely as a vehicle for Aira's amazing writing, they won't be disappointed.

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Jun 18, 2012 Ruby Tombstone rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone with a soul, and patience for dodgy analogies

Shelves: littry-fikshun, latinos-do-it-better, striking-design

I'm about to pick my life up and start again, 2,000km away in the tropics. I want to take all of Aira's books with me to be the books I look back on as symbolic of this time. There's a warm, easygoing, daydreamy sensibility to the writing that I could happily bathe in. There's a pragmatism to the characters, and a sense of irony mixed with magical realism that could only be Latin American. Reading this was a lush, atmospheric, sensual and intellectual treat.

All that aside, I've agonised over how...more

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May 26, 2012 Jeremy added it

Shelves: spanish-language-fiction, latin-american-fiction

Aira's ability to sketch out the entire domestic life of a bunch of migrant workers living in an unfinished apartment complex as a masterful act of compression. He moves with charm, wit and deprecation between these people, balancing between the typical idyls of family life, grocery shopping, marriages, celebrations, children playing games, and balances it out with his usual wondrous, metaphysical musings on literally anything and everything: architecture, space, anthropology, rejection, death t...more

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About César Aira

César Aira (born on February 23, 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, considered by many as one of the leading exponents of Argentine contemporary literature, in spite of his limited public recognition.

He has published over fifty books of stories, novels and essays. Indeed, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of...more César Aira (born on February 23, 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, considered by many as one of the leading exponents of Argentine contemporary literature, in spite of his limited public recognition.

He has published over fifty books of stories, novels and essays. Indeed, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of writing and publication –two to four novella-length books each year.[1]

Aira has often spoken in interviews of elaborating an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a “flight forward” (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into. Aira also seeks in his own work, and praises in the work of others (such as the Argentine-Parisian cartoonist and comic novelist Copi), the “continuum” (el continuo) of a constant movement forward in the fictional narrative. As a result his fictions can jump radically from one genre to another, and often deploy narrative strategies from popular culture and “subliterary” genres like pulp science fiction and television soap operas; on the other hand, he frequently deliberately refuses to conform to generic expectations for how a novel ought to end, leaving many of his fictions quite open-ended.

While his subject matter ranges from Surrealist or Dadaist quasi-nonsense to fantastic tales set in his Buenos Aires neighborhood in Flores, Aira also returns frequently to Argentina’s nineteenth century (the two books translated into English, The Hare and An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, are examples of this; so is the best-known novel of his early years, "Ema la cautiva" (Emma, the Captive)). He also returns regularly to play with stereotypes of an exotic East ("Una novela china", A Chinese Novel); "El volante" (The Flyer), and "El pequeño monje budista" (The Little Buddhist Monk)). Aira also enjoys mocking himself and his childhood home town Coronel Pringles in fictions such as "Cómo me hice monja" (How I Became a Nun), "Cómo me reí" (How I Laughed), “El cerebro musical” (The Musical Brain) and "Las curas milagrosas del doctor Aira" (The Miraculous Cures of Dr. Aira). His novella La prueba (1992) served as the basis --or point of departure; only the first half-hour follows the novella-- of Diego Lerman's film Tan de repente (Suddenly) (2002). His novel "Cómo me hice monja" (How I Became a Nun) was selected as one of the best 10 publications in Spain in the year 1998.

Besides his fiction, and the translation work he does for a living, Aira also writes literary criticism, including monographic studies of Copi, the poet Alejandra Pizarnik, and the nineteenth-century British limerick and nonsense writer Edward Lear. He wrote a short book, Las tres fechas [The Three Dates], arguing for the central importance, when approaching some minor eccentric writers, of examining the moment of their lives about which they are writing , the date of completion of the work, and the date of publication of the work. Aira also was the literary executor of the complete works of his friend the scabrous poet-novelist Osvaldo Lamborghini (1940–1985).

The American publisher, New Directions, has put out four of his works in English translation (An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, How I Became A Nun, Ghosts, The Literary Conference). New Directions plans to publish more works of Aira's in the near future.

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An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

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Quotes from Ghosts

“But the Australians, what do the Australians do? How do they structure their landscape? For a start they postulate a primal builder, whose work they presume only to interpret: the mythical animal who was active in the “dreamtime,” that is, a primal era, beyond verification, as the name indicates. A time of sleep. The visible landscape is an effect of causes that are to be found in the dreamtime. For example, the snake that dragged itself over this plain creating these undulations, etc., etc. These.. curious Aborigines make sure their eyes are closed while events take place, which allows them to see places as records of events. But what they see is a kind of dream, and they wake into a reverie, since the real story (the snake, not the hills) happened while they were asleep.” — 1 person liked it

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