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Aug 01, 2010

Matt rated it:

What a great little book!

Casares comes as close here as a writer possibly could to successfully mixing literary fiction with elements of science fiction. I feel like there is very little that I can say about the plot without spoiling it. Over the first thirty pages I was convinced that this was merely a ghost story – more specifically the ghost story that inspired Shyamalan’s whole “I see dead people” thing. Casares totally surprised me at that point by taking the story in a directi More...

13 comments like (17 people liked it)

Apr 15, 2010

Greg rated it:

Floating Reviews and the Television Show Lost

I just went through my update feed looking to see what my goodreads.com friends have been doing. I see reviews and things I should pay some attention to, but I'm not quite that self-reflexive yet that I will write reviews only about what I'm doing at the moment on goodreads.com. Instead I would like to make an observation of how my goodreads.com update feed mirrors this book.

For the past few days just about every morning an More...

36 comments like (24 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2009

Nora rated it:

This is the kind of book one reads from cover to cover in one sitting (or before bed, and then finishes on the bus in the morning). This is true for a variety of reasons: the length, the mystery evoked in the first twenty or so pages, and the pacing of the narration for the last half.

The narration is haunting, the island where the action (the endless, repetitive action), the events transpire, is eerie, somewhat vague.
The Love (the emotion or obsession or sentiment or consum More...

3 comments like (11 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2008

brian rated it:

am i jackass? a moron?

this is a perfectly good book. and a guy spending months on a sun dappled island amongst three dimensional phantoms re-enacting a single weekend is sublime. but this:

“the most complete and total perception not only of the unreality of the world but of our own unreality: not only do we traverse a realm of shadows, we ourselves are shadows.”

that’s octavio paz. and paz is a badasss. a serious badass. and borges – maybe the biggest badass th More...

12 comments like (12 people liked it)

Nov 23, 2011

Chiara rated it:

“Non fu come se non mi avesse sentito, come se non mi avesse visto; ma come se le sue orecchie non servissero a sentire, i suoi occhi non servissero a vedere.”

Certe volte abbiamo la sensazione – anzi, la certezza – di essere invisibili. Abbiamo la certezza che qualunque cosa diciamo o facciamo non servirà a cambiare le cose. Abbiamo la certezza che i nostri sentimenti non arriveranno alla persona a cui sono destinati e, se anche arriveranno, che questa non li accoglierà. Abbiamo la c More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 21, 2009

Bill rated it:

"The Invention of Morel" is a romantic classic in which passion triumphs over convention, a surrealist classic in which imagination triumphs over reality, a science fiction classic in which technology triumphs over time, and a mystery story whose fantastic resolution always plays fair with the reader. Is corporeality necessary for human personality? Is community possible even in isolation? Can love survive death and--perhaps what is worse--complete indifference? Bioy Casares novel a More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 30, 2011

John rated it:

A character who could be straight out of Borges's "Universal History of Iniquities" takes refuge from the law on a deserted tropical island where he witnesses some pretty strange stuff (I'm trying to be vague here). What seems to begin as the story of a man's slow descent into paranoia turns into what seems like a ghost story before eventually becoming something entirely different - something that could have sprung from the mind of Gene Wolfe or Philip K. Dick on a good day.

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 06, 2009

Jesse rated it:

The novella reputed to be a main source of inspiration for "Last Year at Marienbad," a reputation which is at once both entirely misleading and endlessly evocative. And also of great interest to me, as Casares's text does not immediately announce itself as the obvious source of inspiration, but instead present ideas and themes echo throughout Robbe-Grillet and Resnais's works, hinting at interpretations and angles that don't necessarily surface in the transplant from an unnamed tropic More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Ghoule rated it:

*English below*

Une idée aussi mince qu'intéressante, et exécutée par le biais d'une écriture décousue et pénible. Trop de style et pas assez de concision; le tout aurait pu se dérouler sur 20 ou 30 pages, avec un narrateur plus accrocheur et moins larmoyant.

L'intérêt du livre reposant essentiellement sur l'exploration réalisée via l'écriture et non sur la narration d'une histoire concrète, je m'y suis ennuyé à mourir.

***

The main concept of this boo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 03, 2007

Violet rated it:

This is a beautiful, strange, and thoughtful book that incorporates ontological issues about what it means to record (visual, audio, and otherwise). Told via a diary of a misanthropic escapee, it took me a while to get used to the structure, largely due to the shifts between past and present. (I suppose I'm hung up on this because I've been reading and writing a lot in Spanish this past semester.) At the same time, its structure gives this book a life that could not have been achieved in any oth More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 02, 2007

Chris rated it:

Short novels have always captured my attention because of their ability to get right to the heart of the matter and this classic gem is no different--in fact, it's one of the most engaging and mysterious novels I have read in a long time. Set on a remote island, the main character falls in love with a woman who hardly seems aware of his existence, yet he persists in his desire to get close to her. As the plot moves along, we learn that things are not completely what they seem, which makes for a More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2012

Josh rated it:

A curious little book that is as much a love story as it is a work of "reasoned imagination" as Jorges Luis Borges, a mentor of sorts to the author, calls it in the prologue. A paranoid and terribly insecure fugitive flees to an uninhabited island to escape arrest by the police. There is a museum, swimming pool, and a chapel, signs of abandoned civilization, when inexplicably, a group of people dressed in clothes of another era materialise and dance and party to the the eternal loop of More...

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Feb 10, 2012

Ensiform rated it:

An unnamed narrator, a fugitive from the law, arrives on a deserted island, and is stunned to find a group of people suddenly among him, who appear not to notice him and act in an odd manner. He falls in love with one of the women, Faustine, but soon learns that all is not what it seems to be, and the people are not living beings at all, but three-dimensional recordings of people, complete with mass and tactile impressions.

There are shades of, and possibly in the title a deliberate More...

0 comments like

Feb 01, 2012

Eric rated it:

This gem of a novel is ostensibly a tale of science fiction but has very little use for the science and instead delves into the nature of identity, our attractions to what we see, and whether our desires need flesh, or can transcend flesh and live on in a purely emotional state.

As other reviewers have noted, this book is highly indebted to Borges and indeed he found it to be a masterful example of plotting. And it is well plotted, indeed leaving a rather gruesome twist to the end. Wh More...

1 comment like

Dec 28, 2011

Rodrigo rated it:

La Invención de Moreal: El ABC por reconocer

Debo, como la penosa mayoría, el conocimiento de Adolfo Bioy Casares por mediación de Borges. Es él quien da noticia del extraño país de Uqbar, en una noche que era propicia para los juegos de espejos en la oscuridad. Digo penosa, porque su Obra se sostiene sin ayuda alguna, sin prótesis borgeana, ni ayuda de su matrimonio con Silvina Ocampo, ni nada más que su propia escritura.
Pasó el tiempo en que le leí con ferocidad: Diario de la More...

0 comments like

Dec 08, 2009

Tom rated it:

With The Invention of Morel, Casares has not so much written a book as he has created an idea through which it is possible for the reader to wander, overwhelmed by its implications. Having only read this book once (and, even then, half asleep), I don't know that I can fully appreciate the countless layers of ambiguity that lie in the subtlety of the book's plotting and the implications of its contradictions and deliberately open-ended nature. What I can appreciate, however, is that the titular i More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 03, 2009

Lewis rated it:

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0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 18, 2009

Jimmy rated it:

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0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 10, 2009

Michele rated it:

This book did not becoming interesting until page 68 and what with only 103 pages, that makes for a less than satisfying start. But I suppose that’s what you get for choosing a book for its cover (it was a picture of Louise Brooks).
It’s about a fugitive who is hiding on a now-deserted island whose inhabitants are said to have died from a mysterious disease. A group of tourists show up on the island for a holiday and the company-starved fugitive is torn between wanting to know them and fea More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 31, 2010

Nick rated it:

I came across this on the shelves of a used bookstore and noticed it because it had a NYRB logo on the spine. (Always a good recommendation.) Well, our friends at NYRB hit another one out of the park. Great novel. Read it on the afternoon and evening of the last day of the year. Seems like appropriate timing as the annual loop begins again. (Read the book, that allusion will become clear.)

I read a number of the earlier reviews before writing this and there are several comments about More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 03, 2009

Jesse rated it:

The back cover of this book name-checks Borges, Kafka, P.K. Dick, J. Cortazar, Alain Resnais and Woody Allen, among others. On the front cover is a photograph of Louise Brooks circa 1927. I have never felt like such an easy target as a consumer. The beginning of a long (life-long? it's looking likely) love affair with NYRB.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 07, 2008

Todd rated it:

To refresh my memory I opened to a random page: "Now I spend my days trying to distinguish the edible roots. I have come to manage my life so well that I do all my work and still have time to rest. This makes me feel free, happy." I couldn't be happier. This book is great, one of the best fictional writings I have read for a long time. Going into plot is not useful, but there is plotting, and intrigue. A wonderful book. I want to read it again.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 09, 2010

RandomAnthony rated it:

I wish I hadn’t read the back of The Invention of Morel before I read the novel. Once I read that Borges, Paz, etc. loved this book I felt like I had to like it. Too much pressure.

Fortunately, I think the The Invention of Morel is strong enough that I would have been a fan without any background knowledge. The book is narrated by a fugitive marooned on an island to which the tides carried him after his escape. A house, chapel, and museum occupy the otherwise-deserted island. S More...

5 comments like (17 people liked it)

Jan 31, 2010

Kyle rated it:

What a complete and utter mind-BLEEP! As this was read due to its inclusion in "Lost", the whole time I tried finding connections and allusions that were relevant to the show. I can totally see why they referenced this novel. However, my review will not cover that stuff.

The narrative was extremely unique in that there were so many characters but there was really only one. Distinguishing between reality and hallucination was the first trick to overcome in reading this book, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 02, 2012

Jason rated it:

It might be unfair, but as a Borges short story this would have been brilliant. But as a novella, even a short one, it felt slightly too long for what was otherwise a clever premise, good execution and spine-tingling ending.

The reason it might be unfair is that one cannot read Bioy Casares without knowing that he is a disciple of Borges (after all, Borges wrote the preface). And thus one ends up comparing the book to Borges. Which is inevitably unflattering to just about anyone.

More...

0 comments like

Apr 21, 2009

Molly rated it:

My Lord! If the NYRB Classics republication of this book doesn't have the BEST picture of Louise Brooks ever, I don't know what does. This book is awesome. It's short, it's totally weird, it's dedicated to Borges, and it was (last season) featured (to my unending delight) as one of the books Sawyer reads in Lost. Like The Turn of the Screw, which Lost featured in its first season, The Invention of Morel is a story about one person's (possibly confused, possibly crazy, possibly true) percepti More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 02, 2010

Schuyler rated it:

Fleeing from Johnny Law, a fugitive finds himself on a mysterious deserted island with ghost-like inhabitants. If you don't want to know what's really going on, stop reading right now. Ok. I warned you. These ghostly inhabitants turn out to be a kind of "projection", produced by a machine, invented by a man named, you guessed it, Morel. This machine recorded these actual people some time ago on this island, kind of capturing their souls, to be played on a loop for, theoretically, etern More...

0 comments like

Nov 20, 2008

Lee rated it:

Mostly disappointing, despite moments of glory. But mainly I would've loved this one if it hadn't been a chore to keep my eyes on the page. I didn't care about the narrator or the situation or the prose, and therefore wasn't really engaged until the last twenty-five pages (of 103), post-revelation of the island's dealio. Smart, imaginative, and adventuresome, with simple and sometimes unpredictable sentences potentially open to all sorts of interesting speculation/theorizing, but I'm not even cl More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 23, 2009

Joe rated it:

A solitary, surreal love story. Much more suspenseful and strange than I would have imagined. It begins as the story of a shipwrecked fugitive, but quickly becomes a tale of obsession, immortality and the flawed creations of man.

"I had nothing to hope for. That was not so horrible-and the acceptance of that fact brought me peace of mind. But now the woman has changed all that. And hope is the one thing I must fear." [20:]

"never hope, to avoid disappoint More...

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Feb 07, 2009

Michael rated it:

Intriguing Argentinian classic.

The origin of that doubly intriguing and infuriating film, Last Year in Marienbad.

Written as diary enries, but without the tiresome fractured quality of those who stick too close to the structure.
A man-on-the-run hides out on a deserted island. All that are there are uninhabited buildings, constructed in the 1920's.
And then one morning he wakes to find the place full of strangers, music playing... but they all studiously ignore h More...

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