What do you think?
Rate this book
La Semaine perpétuelle
Le père rêve d'une éponge qui lave le passé.
La mère est partie, il dit qu'elle n'existe plus.
Sorti du monde, le fils poste des vidéos sur Internet et il écrit des poèmes.
La fille ne supporte pas la réalité trop proche et toutes ces personnes qui avancent avec leurs millions de détails.
La grand-mère entend les clignements et les soupirs de chaque moustique.
Tout ce qui leur arrive est dans l'ordre du monde.
La Semaine perpétuelle est d'abord un livre sur les gens d'Internet. Écriture animiste, où toutes les choses du monde peuvent parler – où le monde est possédé. Un livre à la vivacité poétique frappante, la découverte d'une voix.
Quand son esprit monte au plafond, elle se regarde, elle se voit dans le lit, et la grand-mère ajoute un ciel sur chaque chose. Elle regarde les objets, elle fait le tour de la pièce, elle ajoute un ciel pour chaque meuble, un ciel sur la télé, un ciel sur des bouts de pain, un ciel sur les yaourts, un ciel par couverture, un ciel sur le plancher, un ciel sur le gymnase, un ciel sur chaque enfant, Salim, Sara, un ciel sur chaque tête, et un ciel sur chacune de leurs dents, un ciel sur leur front, un ciel sur chaque mèche et tout devient léger.
La mère est partie, il dit qu'elle n'existe plus.
Sorti du monde, le fils poste des vidéos sur Internet et il écrit des poèmes.
La fille ne supporte pas la réalité trop proche et toutes ces personnes qui avancent avec leurs millions de détails.
La grand-mère entend les clignements et les soupirs de chaque moustique.
Tout ce qui leur arrive est dans l'ordre du monde.
La Semaine perpétuelle est d'abord un livre sur les gens d'Internet. Écriture animiste, où toutes les choses du monde peuvent parler – où le monde est possédé. Un livre à la vivacité poétique frappante, la découverte d'une voix.
Quand son esprit monte au plafond, elle se regarde, elle se voit dans le lit, et la grand-mère ajoute un ciel sur chaque chose. Elle regarde les objets, elle fait le tour de la pièce, elle ajoute un ciel pour chaque meuble, un ciel sur la télé, un ciel sur des bouts de pain, un ciel sur les yaourts, un ciel par couverture, un ciel sur le plancher, un ciel sur le gymnase, un ciel sur chaque enfant, Salim, Sara, un ciel sur chaque tête, et un ciel sur chacune de leurs dents, un ciel sur leur front, un ciel sur chaque mèche et tout devient léger.
305 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 19, 2021
27 people are currently reading
792 people want to read
About the author
Laura Vázquez
32 books32 followersLaura Vanesa Vazquez Hutnik es investigadora, crítica y docente. Doctora en Ciencias Sociales por la Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) e investigadora del CONICET. Es Profesora de “Historia de los Medios de Comunicación Nacional y Latinoamericana”, en la Universidad Nacional de Moreno. En la Carrera de Ciencias de la Comunicación de la UBA coordina el Área de Narrativas Dibujadas. Realizó su Postdoctorado en la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales (UBA). Se desempeña como docente en la Maestría de Crítica y Difusión de las Artes, en el UNA. Ha sido invitada como expositora en congresos nacionales e internacionales. Publicó los libros: El oficio de las viñetas. La industria de la historieta argentina (Paidós, 2010) y Fuera de Cuadro. Ideas sobre historieta argentina (Agua Negra, 2012). Dirigió el Congreso Internacional y Bienal de la Historieta y el Humor Gráfico “Viñetas Serias” (2010; 2012 y 2014). Como guionista de historietas publicó en Argentina y en España los libros Entreactos e Historias Corrientes, con dibujos de Dante Ginevra y Federico Rubenacker, respectivamente. Escribió una sección mensual en la revista Fierro entre 2010 y 2014. En 2014, dirigió junto a Oscar Steimberg la revista académica Entre Líneas (revista de estudios sobre historieta y humor gráfico). Intenta escribir ficción cuando la academia le da respiros.
(fuente: Tebeosfera)
(fuente: Tebeosfera)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
February 24, 2026
Shortlisted for the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize, US & Canada
There's this hole full of teeth in our faces, we fill it every day with liquid things and solid things, but we don't understand why. When you think about it, if's just weird, everything we are, there's nothing weirder than us. We feel pain, we walk, and we breathe. We take in air, it enters us, then we spit it back out. We talk, we talk, and you can't imagine anything weirder, because there isn't anything weirder.
Nothing is weirder than a person in the world
The Endless Week (2025) is Alex Niemi's translation of La Semaine perpétuelle (2021) the debut novel by Laura Vázquez, previously a Prix Goncourt winning poet, and is published by the wonderful small US indy press Dorothy (see below), this their successfully longlisted entry for the Republic of Consciousness Prize.
In the original, the book won the fascinating Prix de la Page 111, judged solely on that page of a book, in this case a page about a Vietnamese man who claims not to have slept for 43 years which, the author commented at nova.fr, was the only character in the novel who she did not invent (this being the real life Thai Ngoc:
In the English edition the passage (exactly which part was on page 111 in the original isn't clear to me) is part of pages 93-94.
This is an avowdly anti-conventional novel, one both timeless in many respects but firmly rooted in the social media age - poems and oddbeat philosophical musings sitting alongside descriptions of internet videos and viewer comments. The novel's themes include social isolation but also the sheer weirdness of what most people regard as normal life. It opens:
A head doesn’t just fall off, it can’t fall off. It’s connected to a thin string that goes all the way down to a person’s feet, and if the head falls, so does everything else. You should avoid breaking your head, but you can break your limbs. When you break a limb, you remember the limb is there. When a tooth gets infected, it vibrates inside, almost as if it’s speaking. When you pinch your hand, it suddenly appears. If a person puts an eye out, it becomes the main thing about them. In truth, the body is soft. People are soft. Their hands are soft, more tender than wood, softer than plastic or shells, they are softer than fruit, more tender than the majority of things on Earth. You can pierce through them with a needle, with a nail, it would be easy, you wouldn’t even have to push that hard. There’s nothing easier than piercing through someone’s hand with a pike or a piece of wood. If you lose your hands they might as well rot, there will still be arms left behind. Not your head. A head doesn’t just fall off.
This pre-occupation with, a slantwise take on, the nature of the body is one of the novel's themes.
The plot, such as one can piece it together, isn't really the point but the opening is from the perspective of the father, obsessed with cleanliness (and sponges that can both erase dirt and the past) and in the habit of emailing his children, even in their physical presence, with aphoristic lists of advice.
Those two children are his son, Salim and daughter Sara. Selim had, until the time of the novel's event, physically socially isolated like a Hikikomori, writing poems and connecting with people by the internet, and Sara is a livestream with many followers, neither terribly comfortable with the real-world. Their maternal grandmother lies dying, described in visceral detail in hospital, and the two nurses caring for her suggest that she needs an infusion of blood (her own literally rotting) from her daughter, Sara and Salim's absent mother, and the two set out to track her down, although knowing she has abandoned the family.
They are joined by Jonathan, hitherto an online-only friend of Salim, one forged in online comments sections, and encounter a variety of unusual characters, starting with Jonathan's roommate, who claims to have been born in a castle, his family a religious cult, and their neighbour, who makes his seven children stand, absolutely still, lined up against the walls of his flat in height order.
A couple of examples of those they encounter:
A woman, Catherine, who interrupts one of Sara's lifecasts, and who is, by her own admission, excessively credulous, although she argues that the whole world is strange, and so why is any 'fact' and less incredible than another:
And she made a sound with her throat like a clock that's about to strike. Her parents had made her believe all cars contained monkeys that pedaled under the hood, shed believed that until she was twenty-eight years old. Her parents had told her that, in certain countries, the inhabitants had legs in their ears, little legs that served no purpose, shed believed that until she was twenty-five years old. When she discovered sex in her adolescence, they'd made her believe that brothers and sisters shared orgasms and that, when a brother orgasms, his sister does too, no matter where she is, and vice versa. As a joke, her mother would cry out at the table, shed say: I have news from my brother. Catherine had believed her until last month. Her mother had made her believe that movies in the theater weren't really movies, but real scenes that were taking place in the basement. For almost her entire life, Catherine had believed that humans didn't shit, and that she was the only one who produced those black things, like a disgusting beast.
An elderly man, who tells Salim that he originally invented the genre of rap, to please millions of rats who treat him as their god:
They jump, they whirl around. The more I rapped, the more they umped. Joy surfed on their fur. Imagine a sea of rats, 10,000 rats that rise and fall to the rhythm of the lyrics, my lyrics, your lyrics, our human lyrics. A horde of rats. They reveled. I saw the ground cry with love, a crowd of rats rising and falling like a bellows, like a bellows, like a ... He closed his eyes, and he started to drool. He muttered the sound: Mmmmm. He remained for a few seconds in this strange state. Then he said: Amazing ... Of course, I did my best, I widened the span of my arpeggios. I became meticulous, like a manicurist painting the nails of a baby. No, the nails of an embryo, that's it, like a manicurist painting the nails of an embryo. During the day, I trained, and, at night, I rapped. To be totally hon-est, it became my life, the center of my rhythm. I had a splendid and enjoyable goal. Listen to that word carefully: enjoyable. An enjoyable life. The rats waited for me every night the way people wait for Christ, the way people wait for Michael Jackson at a Michael Jackson concert.
Fascinating, if deliberately somewhat scattergun. 4.5 stars.
Interviews with the translator
https://lithub.com/alex-niemi-on-the-...
https://writeordiemag.com/author-inte...
The US publisher on the book
https://dalkeyarchive.substack.com/p/...
Extract
https://harpers.org/archive/2025/10/b...
Dorothy
Established in 2009, Dorothy, a publishing project is a press dedicated to works of fiction or near fiction or writing about fiction, mostly by women.
Each fall, we publish two new books simultaneously. We work to pair books that draw upon different aesthetic traditions, because a large part of our interest in literature lies in its possibilities, its endless stylistic and formal variety.
The press is named for its editor’s great-aunt Dorothy—a librarian, rose gardener, animal lover, children’s book author, and bookmobile driver (see above)—who regularly gifted her niece children’s books stamped with an owl bookplate.
There's this hole full of teeth in our faces, we fill it every day with liquid things and solid things, but we don't understand why. When you think about it, if's just weird, everything we are, there's nothing weirder than us. We feel pain, we walk, and we breathe. We take in air, it enters us, then we spit it back out. We talk, we talk, and you can't imagine anything weirder, because there isn't anything weirder.
Nothing is weirder than a person in the world
The Endless Week (2025) is Alex Niemi's translation of La Semaine perpétuelle (2021) the debut novel by Laura Vázquez, previously a Prix Goncourt winning poet, and is published by the wonderful small US indy press Dorothy (see below), this their successfully longlisted entry for the Republic of Consciousness Prize.
In the original, the book won the fascinating Prix de la Page 111, judged solely on that page of a book, in this case a page about a Vietnamese man who claims not to have slept for 43 years which, the author commented at nova.fr, was the only character in the novel who she did not invent (this being the real life Thai Ngoc:
Le Prix de la Page 111 édition 2021 a bel et bien été attribué à Laura Vazquez pour celle de son premier roman « La Semaine perpétuelle », publié aux Éditions du sous-sol. Reflétant l’étrangeté naturelle de nos explorations numériques, sa page raconte essentiellement l’histoire vraie d’un Vietnamien qui n’a pas dormi depuis 43 ans, vivant donc 2 vies par jour en se sentant « comme une plante sans eau », parfois filmé par 10 caméras. « De tout le livre, c’est le seul personnage que je n’ai pas inventé », nous a confié l’autrice, arrivant de Marseille et aussi étonnée que nous.
In the English edition the passage (exactly which part was on page 111 in the original isn't clear to me) is part of pages 93-94.
This is an avowdly anti-conventional novel, one both timeless in many respects but firmly rooted in the social media age - poems and oddbeat philosophical musings sitting alongside descriptions of internet videos and viewer comments. The novel's themes include social isolation but also the sheer weirdness of what most people regard as normal life. It opens:
A head doesn’t just fall off, it can’t fall off. It’s connected to a thin string that goes all the way down to a person’s feet, and if the head falls, so does everything else. You should avoid breaking your head, but you can break your limbs. When you break a limb, you remember the limb is there. When a tooth gets infected, it vibrates inside, almost as if it’s speaking. When you pinch your hand, it suddenly appears. If a person puts an eye out, it becomes the main thing about them. In truth, the body is soft. People are soft. Their hands are soft, more tender than wood, softer than plastic or shells, they are softer than fruit, more tender than the majority of things on Earth. You can pierce through them with a needle, with a nail, it would be easy, you wouldn’t even have to push that hard. There’s nothing easier than piercing through someone’s hand with a pike or a piece of wood. If you lose your hands they might as well rot, there will still be arms left behind. Not your head. A head doesn’t just fall off.
This pre-occupation with, a slantwise take on, the nature of the body is one of the novel's themes.
The plot, such as one can piece it together, isn't really the point but the opening is from the perspective of the father, obsessed with cleanliness (and sponges that can both erase dirt and the past) and in the habit of emailing his children, even in their physical presence, with aphoristic lists of advice.
Those two children are his son, Salim and daughter Sara. Selim had, until the time of the novel's event, physically socially isolated like a Hikikomori, writing poems and connecting with people by the internet, and Sara is a livestream with many followers, neither terribly comfortable with the real-world. Their maternal grandmother lies dying, described in visceral detail in hospital, and the two nurses caring for her suggest that she needs an infusion of blood (her own literally rotting) from her daughter, Sara and Salim's absent mother, and the two set out to track her down, although knowing she has abandoned the family.
They are joined by Jonathan, hitherto an online-only friend of Salim, one forged in online comments sections, and encounter a variety of unusual characters, starting with Jonathan's roommate, who claims to have been born in a castle, his family a religious cult, and their neighbour, who makes his seven children stand, absolutely still, lined up against the walls of his flat in height order.
A couple of examples of those they encounter:
A woman, Catherine, who interrupts one of Sara's lifecasts, and who is, by her own admission, excessively credulous, although she argues that the whole world is strange, and so why is any 'fact' and less incredible than another:
And she made a sound with her throat like a clock that's about to strike. Her parents had made her believe all cars contained monkeys that pedaled under the hood, shed believed that until she was twenty-eight years old. Her parents had told her that, in certain countries, the inhabitants had legs in their ears, little legs that served no purpose, shed believed that until she was twenty-five years old. When she discovered sex in her adolescence, they'd made her believe that brothers and sisters shared orgasms and that, when a brother orgasms, his sister does too, no matter where she is, and vice versa. As a joke, her mother would cry out at the table, shed say: I have news from my brother. Catherine had believed her until last month. Her mother had made her believe that movies in the theater weren't really movies, but real scenes that were taking place in the basement. For almost her entire life, Catherine had believed that humans didn't shit, and that she was the only one who produced those black things, like a disgusting beast.
An elderly man, who tells Salim that he originally invented the genre of rap, to please millions of rats who treat him as their god:
They jump, they whirl around. The more I rapped, the more they umped. Joy surfed on their fur. Imagine a sea of rats, 10,000 rats that rise and fall to the rhythm of the lyrics, my lyrics, your lyrics, our human lyrics. A horde of rats. They reveled. I saw the ground cry with love, a crowd of rats rising and falling like a bellows, like a bellows, like a ... He closed his eyes, and he started to drool. He muttered the sound: Mmmmm. He remained for a few seconds in this strange state. Then he said: Amazing ... Of course, I did my best, I widened the span of my arpeggios. I became meticulous, like a manicurist painting the nails of a baby. No, the nails of an embryo, that's it, like a manicurist painting the nails of an embryo. During the day, I trained, and, at night, I rapped. To be totally hon-est, it became my life, the center of my rhythm. I had a splendid and enjoyable goal. Listen to that word carefully: enjoyable. An enjoyable life. The rats waited for me every night the way people wait for Christ, the way people wait for Michael Jackson at a Michael Jackson concert.
Fascinating, if deliberately somewhat scattergun. 4.5 stars.
Interviews with the translator
https://lithub.com/alex-niemi-on-the-...
https://writeordiemag.com/author-inte...
The US publisher on the book
https://dalkeyarchive.substack.com/p/...
Extract
https://harpers.org/archive/2025/10/b...
Dorothy
Established in 2009, Dorothy, a publishing project is a press dedicated to works of fiction or near fiction or writing about fiction, mostly by women.
Each fall, we publish two new books simultaneously. We work to pair books that draw upon different aesthetic traditions, because a large part of our interest in literature lies in its possibilities, its endless stylistic and formal variety.
The press is named for its editor’s great-aunt Dorothy—a librarian, rose gardener, animal lover, children’s book author, and bookmobile driver (see above)—who regularly gifted her niece children’s books stamped with an owl bookplate.
December 1, 2025
I want to say that this is the craziest book of the year, but to say that I would first have to read every single other thing that was published this year, from Big 5 releases to self-published romantasy smut to religious pamphlets, and even then, before making my official confirmation, I would also have to stop and analyze whether I even have the authority to speak for the crazy community in deeming anything to be the craziest anything of anything, and then I get a headache and decide to just say, well, this book is pretty damn crazy but only possibly, really close but still only possibly, the craziest thing that will come out this year. Possibly.
February 3, 2026
I would have read this simply because it was published by Dorothy, but I also read it because it was longlisted for the 2025 US/Canada Republic of Consciousness Small Press Prize.
3.5 stars rounded up... You're not getting a review below. You're getting reactions. Precede (or not) at your own discretion...
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
There's advice in this book and that advice often comes from parents or strangers or old random men who seem like they're either mystics or crazy or homeless. And the most important thing to remember is that none of that advice will stop you from blinking nearly 20,000 times per day (actually, a higher rate according to one Vázquez character who must have sources we don't know about). But do these facts help us in any way? Does this advice amount to a hill of beans? Is it even the type of thing that might stop a bird from falling from your ceiling? Ask yourself these questions, but just look up the answers online because we don't want you pulling a hamstring.
-------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
Words are mutable and diacronic and twistable and reading this is somewhat akin to life amidst the online and social-mediated world we have in real life (or, contemporary real virtual life) in terms of the flow of disparate thoughts, emotions, facts, nonsense, digressions, feelings, people, etc. And when we communicate with one another, at least in this text, it's almost as if we're talking past one another or simply delivering nonstop soliloquies. There's a kernel of something in there somewhere and you'll get to it. One day. But you'll no longer be looking for it and won't be able to recognize why it is you were looking for it in the first place.
--------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
It is weird to be people. There's a whole two pages on how weird it is to be people and have a head and put things in that head and forget things. And I think the beauty of this reading experience is that it often sent my head off in random directions. Upon reading these two pages my brain started thinking about when we ingest things and at what point we no longer feel/sense those things. Indulge me here, if you will: The next time you take a bite of food or a sip of liquid, don't swallow it right away but simply think about what you can sense/feel immediately---the texture, the temperature, the size, etc. And then try to locate the time/spot that you can no longer sense any of those things as you swallow. Do they all disappear at once? Exactly where in your body did you last feel/sense that food or liquid? For me, how weird to be alive for 50 years and never once have considered this experience. The way what we ingest disappears, seemingly becomes indistinguishable from the rest of ourself.
--------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
Mom. MOM! Mom? Has anyone seen mom?
3.5 stars rounded up... You're not getting a review below. You're getting reactions. Precede (or not) at your own discretion...
--------------------------------------
"Yes, nice to meet you. But, if I may, you two look alike. In a negative sense. You have what we call a common deformity. It’s in your nature, the way a triangle has three angles. You are like two plums from the same plum tree. A plum tree crawling with parasites."
--------------------------------------
There's advice in this book and that advice often comes from parents or strangers or old random men who seem like they're either mystics or crazy or homeless. And the most important thing to remember is that none of that advice will stop you from blinking nearly 20,000 times per day (actually, a higher rate according to one Vázquez character who must have sources we don't know about). But do these facts help us in any way? Does this advice amount to a hill of beans? Is it even the type of thing that might stop a bird from falling from your ceiling? Ask yourself these questions, but just look up the answers online because we don't want you pulling a hamstring.
-------------------------------------
"I’ve always relied on another object to construct my thoughts, that’s my way of doing things, I create links, I construct thoughts. I don’t know what the first thought in the world was. But if we found out, we’d never have to think again, right? The first thought contains all the others. I’ve never really thought, I’ve never thought for myself, I only link ideas to ideas that have already existed for millenia. I admit it, though, I don’t mind admitting it, I’m modest."
-------------------------------------
Words are mutable and diacronic and twistable and reading this is somewhat akin to life amidst the online and social-mediated world we have in real life (or, contemporary real virtual life) in terms of the flow of disparate thoughts, emotions, facts, nonsense, digressions, feelings, people, etc. And when we communicate with one another, at least in this text, it's almost as if we're talking past one another or simply delivering nonstop soliloquies. There's a kernel of something in there somewhere and you'll get to it. One day. But you'll no longer be looking for it and won't be able to recognize why it is you were looking for it in the first place.
--------------------------------------
"When we’re with another person, we can’t exist normally. The other person draws us outside ourselves, they take us outside of ourselves. We become responsible for this moment with the other person. We can’t see ourselves anymore. You have to take a break to keep from losing yourself. But when we’re alone for too long, we don’t feel like ourselves. We can’t see ourselves anymore. We can’t feel like ourselves with other people, but we can’t feel like ourselves without other people."
-------------------------------------
It is weird to be people. There's a whole two pages on how weird it is to be people and have a head and put things in that head and forget things. And I think the beauty of this reading experience is that it often sent my head off in random directions. Upon reading these two pages my brain started thinking about when we ingest things and at what point we no longer feel/sense those things. Indulge me here, if you will: The next time you take a bite of food or a sip of liquid, don't swallow it right away but simply think about what you can sense/feel immediately---the texture, the temperature, the size, etc. And then try to locate the time/spot that you can no longer sense any of those things as you swallow. Do they all disappear at once? Exactly where in your body did you last feel/sense that food or liquid? For me, how weird to be alive for 50 years and never once have considered this experience. The way what we ingest disappears, seemingly becomes indistinguishable from the rest of ourself.
--------------------------------------
"Just imagine the man who was on the brink of inventing the word brink. He couldn’t even say he was on the brink of inventing the word brink."
-------------------------------------
Mom. MOM! Mom? Has anyone seen mom?
February 27, 2026
Shortlisted for the 2026 RofC US/Canada Prize
The Endless Week (2025) is Alex Niemi's translation of La Semaine perpétuelle (2021) the debut novel by Laura Vázquez, previously a Prix Goncourt winning poet.
In the original, the book won the fascinating « Prix de la Page 111 » which is a prize judged solely on that page of a book. big thanks to gr friend Paul for pointing this out (& look at his great review for more information on which passage won & more)!! from the wiki page & adding here because some fave authors have won this award + want to deep-dive into it! Le prix de la page 111 est un prix littéraire français fondé en 2012 par un groupe informel d'acteurs du monde de l'édition. Il est remis au mois d'octobre ou de novembre chaque année.
Le premier prix de la page 111 a été proclamé le 7 novembre 2012 sur Radio Nova.
&, WOW. so happy I saved this for last (of my initial longlist selections) as just blown-away! a challenging & daring read that’s completely genre‑bending, blending dark satire, tenderness, & the absurd to explore trauma, mental strain, & the way online lives intersect with real‑world grief…
definitely recommend. only be prepared that it is not linear & weird in the completely best way possible. &, while there is one last longlisted book I would like to read some point this year, really rooting for this to take the prize!!
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror;
then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
—1 Corinthians 13:12
A head doesn't just fall off, it can't fall off.
(first sentence, whole first paragraph in the highlights)
*
He said: Are you listening to me? Salim formed the word: Yes. And the word: Dad. He repeated the word: Dad. He felt as if his voice were something outside of himself, as if his voice came from the walls or the surfaces around him, as if his own voice didn't come out of his throat but the air surrounding things, as if his voice didn't exist. He said: Da-a-a-a-ad, but he didn't hear his own voice, he heard the outlines, he heard the edges. When a voice finishes a word, it disappears.
*
When sugar gets dirty, it’s disgusting. Does anyone on Earth want disgusting sugar? No. Nobody, Salim. Nobody wants that.
*
Now it's a pleasure to watch your face like it's my job. It brings me back to my childhood body. Be kind, eyes are tax free as far as I know, and there's no shortage of problems in the world.
*
All objects have serrated edges, all of them, even water. When you look at skin under a microscope, you can see serrated edges shaped like swords, on any sort of skin, even ones that seem soft, like a maggot's, or even a snake's, the skin of a trout, the skin of a tadpole, the edges of a bodily organ. When you look at a cell under a microscope, you see spines, points. That's how objects are shaped, all objects, that's the shape of matter. Life is in the shape of a point, the shape of a big nail.
*
When a wound appears, it stays. It learns. It progresses. It festers. The pain speaks. It says: You are in this world, you create ebbs and flows, you have no control.
*
When a person is sick, you want to help them. When you encourage this desire, you end up wanting to hit the person, slap them in the face, you want to say: Stop it, everyone is sick of this.
*
You have a soothing voice, I feel sleepy, I like how you move, can you whisper close to the mic next time?
*
The father started yelling again, he yelled for a while, he repeated the sentences: Quit getting on my nerves, you two really need to quit getting on my nerves, you're testing my nervous system, you're messing with my internal systems, you know that? This behavior isn't normal, children who behave this badly aren't normal. You're taking bad behavior to a whole new level! There aren't any birds in the ceilings, stop, stop it right now, stop all of this, these stories won't get you anywhere good, you're not supposed to lie to your father.
You're not supposed to lie.
*
We say the word time, but we can't see time, we can't draw it. We can't see time because we can't measure it. We use numbers, but we aren't measuring anything because we don't know where the beginning or the end is.
*
And you? Do you have a religion other than looking at yourself? Do you actually have a religion, other than taking pictures of yourself, do you have a religion?
*
Then the father had explained that his body felt like a hotel, and the doctor said: That's an entirely different story. That's not my area of expertise.
*
The situation is alarming, sir, in a manner of speaking of course, because alarming doesn't mean that an alarm is going to go off in your house, make no mistake. Alarming means that things aren't going well, however, no alarms will actually go off. We haven't placed any alarms on the premises of your place of residence, however, the situation remains alarming, even without an alarm. Have I made myself clear?
*
He said: It's my left arm. You just broke it, but don't worry, it's not important.
You really hurt me, but it's nothing, it doesn't matter. I'm not a wimp. The bones you just broke will never be able to regrow, but that's not important. I wasn't that attached to them. Besides, I have to admit, I never liked that arm, I've been suspicious of it since I was a child. It's one arm too many, as they say, one arm too many.
*
That's too bad, because every time you pour water in the sea, something happens. It says: You can pour blood in the sea, it's like pouring water in the sea. Blood is made from water. People are made from water. If you want something to happen, you should spit water from your mouth. I see the sea through the window and I go toward the sea. I open my mouth above the sea and water falls from it. I look up, I see the ghost swimming in the distance. It turns around laughing. It yells: You fucking asshole, I'm you.
*
He kept his face tense like a mask in order to feel, he whispered: Muscles, muscles. He wished he had buttons for his own body to regulate it. A button for sleeping, a button for laughing, a button for speaking, a button on his stomach for sobering up.
*
I want to become a locksmith because I love locks. Since I was little, I always looked at locks by putting my eye up to the locks. I've always loved locks. Maybe it's the sound of the key that I love in locks. Maybe it's the key going into the lock's hole. Locks are perfect. If a lock isn't perfect, it's no longer a lock. The middle part of a lock is in the shape of a human.
*
And there was this one girl who always posed as if she were in a profile picture, every moment of her life, she stuck her lips out, she opened her eyes wide. It had become natural for her. She looked like a profile picture. One day, her parents punished her because she'd stopped speaking, she was acting like a picture. When her parents took her phone, the girl's hands continued to gesture in the air, as if she were scrolling in the air, her hands moved, her eyes stared at nothing, like the father in the kitchen sometimes.
*
They say: We're good. They post the photo on the network.
*
Yesterday, the pain left. It crawled around the room. It kneeled. It was quiet. Its shape turned against its skin.
It turned onto itself like a spiral. It was looking for pain, because pain loves pain.
*
They say: I promise. A doctor touches their stomachs and says offensive things. Are you crying? If you want, I can slap you to get rid of the tears. My uncle did that, it's good, it works, it got rid of all my tears.
*
Attention is the supreme proof of parental love, of love, period. It's better to have painful attention than an absence of love. I love my children. I wouldn't know how to tell them apart from each other, but I love them as a group.
*
Softness is a danger. For people who have suffered too much, softness is the greatest danger. A moment of softness can lead to death or madness. For
people who have suffered too much, softness is worse than a bomb. A single caress and these people fall. They come undone, they give in. They crack, then they explode, and everything comes out.
They overflow, they're done.
*
4. There are three kinds of people. First, those who don't touch your innermost self, they stay far away from you. Ignore them. Then there are those who touch your innermost self, but at the wrong time, they hurt you. Push them away.
Finally, there are those who touch your innermost self the right way and at the right time. Keep them close.
5. Death will deliver you from all the people who annoy you.
6. Every century seems horrible. That's normal, don't worry about it.
7. Luck only has one boat.
Don't miss it.
=============
2026 RofC US/Canada Prize
in-progress personal rankings; shortlisted books are numbered
1. The Endless Week, Laura Vázquez (tr. Alex Niemi)
2. Little Lazarus, Michael Bible
—On Earth As It Is Beneath, Ana Paula Maia (tr. Padma Viswanathan)
3. Hothouse Bloom, Austyn Wohlers
—Small Scale Sinners, Mahreen Sohail
—Little World, Josephine Rowe
—Iris & the Dead, Miranda Schreiber
5. Dreaming of Dead People, Rosalind Belben
—Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation, Sarah Yahm
[9/10 & up next: The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje (tr. David McKay) - shortlisted]
=============
the press:
Established in 2009, Dorothy, a publishing project is a press dedicated to works of fiction or near fiction or writing about fiction, mostly by women.
Each fall, we publish two new books simultaneously. We work to pair books that draw upon different aesthetic traditions, because a large part of our interest in literature lies in its possibilities, its endless stylistic and formal variety.
The press is named for its editor's great-aunt Dorothy— a librarian, rose gardener, animal lover, children's book author, and bookmobile driver (see above)-who regularly gifted her niece children's books stamped with an owl bookplate.
=============
Laura Vazquez is a leading figure in contemporary French literature and winner of the 2023 Prix Goncourt for poetry. The Endless Week, her debut novel, won the Prix de la Page 111 and was a finalist for the Prix Wepler. Her debut collection of poetry, The Hand of the Hand, won the Prix de la Vocation.
She published her first play, the lesbian tragedy Zero, in 2024. Vazquez regularly gives readings around the world in venues such as the Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. She lives in Marseille, France.
Alex Niemi is a writer and award-winning literary translator. She is the recipient of an NEA fellowship, the Heldt Prize, and the aat-seel Prize for best poetry translation from a Slavic language.
=============
Alex Niemi on the Process of Translation and the Rhythm of Language: https://lithub.com/alex-niemi-on-the-...
The Endless Week (2025) is Alex Niemi's translation of La Semaine perpétuelle (2021) the debut novel by Laura Vázquez, previously a Prix Goncourt winning poet.
In the original, the book won the fascinating « Prix de la Page 111 » which is a prize judged solely on that page of a book. big thanks to gr friend Paul for pointing this out (& look at his great review for more information on which passage won & more)!! from the wiki page & adding here because some fave authors have won this award + want to deep-dive into it! Le prix de la page 111 est un prix littéraire français fondé en 2012 par un groupe informel d'acteurs du monde de l'édition. Il est remis au mois d'octobre ou de novembre chaque année.
Le premier prix de la page 111 a été proclamé le 7 novembre 2012 sur Radio Nova.
&, WOW. so happy I saved this for last (of my initial longlist selections) as just blown-away! a challenging & daring read that’s completely genre‑bending, blending dark satire, tenderness, & the absurd to explore trauma, mental strain, & the way online lives intersect with real‑world grief…
definitely recommend. only be prepared that it is not linear & weird in the completely best way possible. &, while there is one last longlisted book I would like to read some point this year, really rooting for this to take the prize!!
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror;
then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
—1 Corinthians 13:12
A head doesn't just fall off, it can't fall off.
(first sentence, whole first paragraph in the highlights)
*
He said: Are you listening to me? Salim formed the word: Yes. And the word: Dad. He repeated the word: Dad. He felt as if his voice were something outside of himself, as if his voice came from the walls or the surfaces around him, as if his own voice didn't come out of his throat but the air surrounding things, as if his voice didn't exist. He said: Da-a-a-a-ad, but he didn't hear his own voice, he heard the outlines, he heard the edges. When a voice finishes a word, it disappears.
*
When sugar gets dirty, it’s disgusting. Does anyone on Earth want disgusting sugar? No. Nobody, Salim. Nobody wants that.
*
Now it's a pleasure to watch your face like it's my job. It brings me back to my childhood body. Be kind, eyes are tax free as far as I know, and there's no shortage of problems in the world.
*
All objects have serrated edges, all of them, even water. When you look at skin under a microscope, you can see serrated edges shaped like swords, on any sort of skin, even ones that seem soft, like a maggot's, or even a snake's, the skin of a trout, the skin of a tadpole, the edges of a bodily organ. When you look at a cell under a microscope, you see spines, points. That's how objects are shaped, all objects, that's the shape of matter. Life is in the shape of a point, the shape of a big nail.
*
When a wound appears, it stays. It learns. It progresses. It festers. The pain speaks. It says: You are in this world, you create ebbs and flows, you have no control.
*
When a person is sick, you want to help them. When you encourage this desire, you end up wanting to hit the person, slap them in the face, you want to say: Stop it, everyone is sick of this.
*
You have a soothing voice, I feel sleepy, I like how you move, can you whisper close to the mic next time?
*
The father started yelling again, he yelled for a while, he repeated the sentences: Quit getting on my nerves, you two really need to quit getting on my nerves, you're testing my nervous system, you're messing with my internal systems, you know that? This behavior isn't normal, children who behave this badly aren't normal. You're taking bad behavior to a whole new level! There aren't any birds in the ceilings, stop, stop it right now, stop all of this, these stories won't get you anywhere good, you're not supposed to lie to your father.
You're not supposed to lie.
*
We say the word time, but we can't see time, we can't draw it. We can't see time because we can't measure it. We use numbers, but we aren't measuring anything because we don't know where the beginning or the end is.
*
And you? Do you have a religion other than looking at yourself? Do you actually have a religion, other than taking pictures of yourself, do you have a religion?
*
Then the father had explained that his body felt like a hotel, and the doctor said: That's an entirely different story. That's not my area of expertise.
*
The situation is alarming, sir, in a manner of speaking of course, because alarming doesn't mean that an alarm is going to go off in your house, make no mistake. Alarming means that things aren't going well, however, no alarms will actually go off. We haven't placed any alarms on the premises of your place of residence, however, the situation remains alarming, even without an alarm. Have I made myself clear?
*
He said: It's my left arm. You just broke it, but don't worry, it's not important.
You really hurt me, but it's nothing, it doesn't matter. I'm not a wimp. The bones you just broke will never be able to regrow, but that's not important. I wasn't that attached to them. Besides, I have to admit, I never liked that arm, I've been suspicious of it since I was a child. It's one arm too many, as they say, one arm too many.
*
That's too bad, because every time you pour water in the sea, something happens. It says: You can pour blood in the sea, it's like pouring water in the sea. Blood is made from water. People are made from water. If you want something to happen, you should spit water from your mouth. I see the sea through the window and I go toward the sea. I open my mouth above the sea and water falls from it. I look up, I see the ghost swimming in the distance. It turns around laughing. It yells: You fucking asshole, I'm you.
*
He kept his face tense like a mask in order to feel, he whispered: Muscles, muscles. He wished he had buttons for his own body to regulate it. A button for sleeping, a button for laughing, a button for speaking, a button on his stomach for sobering up.
*
I want to become a locksmith because I love locks. Since I was little, I always looked at locks by putting my eye up to the locks. I've always loved locks. Maybe it's the sound of the key that I love in locks. Maybe it's the key going into the lock's hole. Locks are perfect. If a lock isn't perfect, it's no longer a lock. The middle part of a lock is in the shape of a human.
*
And there was this one girl who always posed as if she were in a profile picture, every moment of her life, she stuck her lips out, she opened her eyes wide. It had become natural for her. She looked like a profile picture. One day, her parents punished her because she'd stopped speaking, she was acting like a picture. When her parents took her phone, the girl's hands continued to gesture in the air, as if she were scrolling in the air, her hands moved, her eyes stared at nothing, like the father in the kitchen sometimes.
*
They say: We're good. They post the photo on the network.
*
Yesterday, the pain left. It crawled around the room. It kneeled. It was quiet. Its shape turned against its skin.
It turned onto itself like a spiral. It was looking for pain, because pain loves pain.
*
They say: I promise. A doctor touches their stomachs and says offensive things. Are you crying? If you want, I can slap you to get rid of the tears. My uncle did that, it's good, it works, it got rid of all my tears.
*
Attention is the supreme proof of parental love, of love, period. It's better to have painful attention than an absence of love. I love my children. I wouldn't know how to tell them apart from each other, but I love them as a group.
*
Softness is a danger. For people who have suffered too much, softness is the greatest danger. A moment of softness can lead to death or madness. For
people who have suffered too much, softness is worse than a bomb. A single caress and these people fall. They come undone, they give in. They crack, then they explode, and everything comes out.
They overflow, they're done.
*
4. There are three kinds of people. First, those who don't touch your innermost self, they stay far away from you. Ignore them. Then there are those who touch your innermost self, but at the wrong time, they hurt you. Push them away.
Finally, there are those who touch your innermost self the right way and at the right time. Keep them close.
5. Death will deliver you from all the people who annoy you.
6. Every century seems horrible. That's normal, don't worry about it.
7. Luck only has one boat.
Don't miss it.
=============
2026 RofC US/Canada Prize
in-progress personal rankings; shortlisted books are numbered
1. The Endless Week, Laura Vázquez (tr. Alex Niemi)
2. Little Lazarus, Michael Bible
—On Earth As It Is Beneath, Ana Paula Maia (tr. Padma Viswanathan)
3. Hothouse Bloom, Austyn Wohlers
—Small Scale Sinners, Mahreen Sohail
—Little World, Josephine Rowe
—Iris & the Dead, Miranda Schreiber
5. Dreaming of Dead People, Rosalind Belben
—Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation, Sarah Yahm
[9/10 & up next: The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje (tr. David McKay) - shortlisted]
=============
the press:
Established in 2009, Dorothy, a publishing project is a press dedicated to works of fiction or near fiction or writing about fiction, mostly by women.
Each fall, we publish two new books simultaneously. We work to pair books that draw upon different aesthetic traditions, because a large part of our interest in literature lies in its possibilities, its endless stylistic and formal variety.
The press is named for its editor's great-aunt Dorothy— a librarian, rose gardener, animal lover, children's book author, and bookmobile driver (see above)-who regularly gifted her niece children's books stamped with an owl bookplate.
=============
Laura Vazquez is a leading figure in contemporary French literature and winner of the 2023 Prix Goncourt for poetry. The Endless Week, her debut novel, won the Prix de la Page 111 and was a finalist for the Prix Wepler. Her debut collection of poetry, The Hand of the Hand, won the Prix de la Vocation.
She published her first play, the lesbian tragedy Zero, in 2024. Vazquez regularly gives readings around the world in venues such as the Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. She lives in Marseille, France.
Alex Niemi is a writer and award-winning literary translator. She is the recipient of an NEA fellowship, the Heldt Prize, and the aat-seel Prize for best poetry translation from a Slavic language.
=============
Alex Niemi on the Process of Translation and the Rhythm of Language: https://lithub.com/alex-niemi-on-the-...
December 23, 2025
*The Endless Week* reads like a schizophrenic novel in which money, language, and affect all stutter in place, refusing to cohere. The big and the small make no difference; the existential and the mundane, beauty and horror, swim in the same terrible fishbowl, each new scene another almost compulsive offshoot. It feels like being slowly dissolved.
On the surface, this is “about” the impending death of an already vegetable grandmother: a body technically still in the family even as everyone around her occupies their own states of non‑being. Plot is almost beside the point. What matters is the accumulation of not‑quite‑living—depression, addiction, economic precarity, exploitation, and absurdist violence.
There is no clear arc so much as lateral connection: images and sentences recur with slight mutations, motifs burrow sideways rather than upwards. The result is a text that metastasizes in all directions at once—across bodies, rooms, screens—without offering the relief of progression. The language is deceptively plain and deadpan, but it moves by repetition and tiny shifts, like someone hammering the same nail a little deeper each time, generating not eventful horror but a grinding, low‑level dread that never resolves.
The characters live in a world where time is fragmented and continuous at once, where work, caregiving, and online life blur into an undifferentiated present, and where desire is both intensified and hollowed out. The violence—familial, economic, bodily, psychic—is less spectacular than pervasive: care as entrapment, the internet as an infinite “elsewhere” that never actually lets anyone leave the room. The book keeps jumping registers—funny to grotesque to tender to sickening—without changing key, as if all affect existed on the same flattened, hyperlinked plane.
What makes *The Endless Week* so profoundly interesting, and so exhausting, is that it refuses to separate the serious from the trivial. The slow dying of the grandmother and the petty cruelties of a given day, the looming sense of planetary and economic collapse and the boredom of scrolling—all of it sits in the same bowl, bumping against the same glass. The novel is saturated with violence, but mostly violence of attrition rather than climax, a suffocating accumulation of harms, frustrations, and degradations that feels uncomfortably close to contemporary life.
And yet, it is brilliant. Its rigor—its commitment to staying inside this fishbowl without flinching—produces a rare clarity about what it means to live under these conditions. It is funny in a way that hurts, tender without ever sentimentalizing, horrifying while remaining intimately domestic. Five stars, absolutely: one of the clearest fictional articulations of the kind of life late capital makes possible, a life technically ongoing but experienced as not quite being.
On the surface, this is “about” the impending death of an already vegetable grandmother: a body technically still in the family even as everyone around her occupies their own states of non‑being. Plot is almost beside the point. What matters is the accumulation of not‑quite‑living—depression, addiction, economic precarity, exploitation, and absurdist violence.
There is no clear arc so much as lateral connection: images and sentences recur with slight mutations, motifs burrow sideways rather than upwards. The result is a text that metastasizes in all directions at once—across bodies, rooms, screens—without offering the relief of progression. The language is deceptively plain and deadpan, but it moves by repetition and tiny shifts, like someone hammering the same nail a little deeper each time, generating not eventful horror but a grinding, low‑level dread that never resolves.
The characters live in a world where time is fragmented and continuous at once, where work, caregiving, and online life blur into an undifferentiated present, and where desire is both intensified and hollowed out. The violence—familial, economic, bodily, psychic—is less spectacular than pervasive: care as entrapment, the internet as an infinite “elsewhere” that never actually lets anyone leave the room. The book keeps jumping registers—funny to grotesque to tender to sickening—without changing key, as if all affect existed on the same flattened, hyperlinked plane.
What makes *The Endless Week* so profoundly interesting, and so exhausting, is that it refuses to separate the serious from the trivial. The slow dying of the grandmother and the petty cruelties of a given day, the looming sense of planetary and economic collapse and the boredom of scrolling—all of it sits in the same bowl, bumping against the same glass. The novel is saturated with violence, but mostly violence of attrition rather than climax, a suffocating accumulation of harms, frustrations, and degradations that feels uncomfortably close to contemporary life.
And yet, it is brilliant. Its rigor—its commitment to staying inside this fishbowl without flinching—produces a rare clarity about what it means to live under these conditions. It is funny in a way that hurts, tender without ever sentimentalizing, horrifying while remaining intimately domestic. Five stars, absolutely: one of the clearest fictional articulations of the kind of life late capital makes possible, a life technically ongoing but experienced as not quite being.
November 11, 2025
A haunting and beautiful exploration of apathy and psychosis, written in prose that was clearly composed in the mind of a poet. This book drags a black highlighter across society's dehumanization and commercialization of the individual. Great book, Ms. Vázquez.
Read
February 8, 20262026 RofC US/Canada Prize Longlist #4
I found this impossible to finish right now. Vázquez’s writing is performative and largely meaningless, the polar opposite of what I’m doing in my own overworked academic life. My brain didn’t have the room for both. Something had to give, and I’m afraid this was it.
I found this impossible to finish right now. Vázquez’s writing is performative and largely meaningless, the polar opposite of what I’m doing in my own overworked academic life. My brain didn’t have the room for both. Something had to give, and I’m afraid this was it.
December 8, 2025
The endless read :D
The majority of this was just too formless to follow. There was something magnetic about the writing, and a few bits did make me laugh out loud on the train, but I had to process it all LINE BY LINE because I never fully grasped who the characters were or what they were on about. This got exhausting after 150 pages and I was fully ready to move on with my life after 200. I trudged to the end because I had hope and new books are expensive but damn.
Should’ve abandoned at the first unnecessary torture passage. It only got worse from there…
The majority of this was just too formless to follow. There was something magnetic about the writing, and a few bits did make me laugh out loud on the train, but I had to process it all LINE BY LINE because I never fully grasped who the characters were or what they were on about. This got exhausting after 150 pages and I was fully ready to move on with my life after 200. I trudged to the end because I had hope and new books are expensive but damn.
Should’ve abandoned at the first unnecessary torture passage. It only got worse from there…
June 14, 2025
This knocked my socks right off. Full review to come.
February 7, 2026
I became meticulous, like a manicurist painting the nails of a baby. No, the nails of an embryo, that’s it, like a manicurist painting the nails of an embryo.
Read
January 8, 2026The Endless Book :(
December 4, 2025
Like Lanthimos characters straightfaced through the absurdist ends of worst case scenarios bur even more whimsical and not really funny
August 10, 2025
the creativity in this book goes crazy... and i mean that both literally and figuratively.
reading this meant forcing myself to exist in a world with characters who have uncontrolled minds that run rampant with absurd, drawn-out thoughts. definitely didn't enjoy that so much, but i also couldn't help but appreciate the inventiveness of an author who is capable of generating what seemed like an endless succession of nonsensical ideas. (i added a star because of that.)
reading this meant forcing myself to exist in a world with characters who have uncontrolled minds that run rampant with absurd, drawn-out thoughts. definitely didn't enjoy that so much, but i also couldn't help but appreciate the inventiveness of an author who is capable of generating what seemed like an endless succession of nonsensical ideas. (i added a star because of that.)
December 12, 2025
This a pretty good, but not entirely consistent, read. I picked up The Endless Week after reading an excerpt in a magazine, which I enjoyed. Vasquez’s depictions of television, media, celebrity, are where she is strongest. They achieve a satirical edge by toeing the line between believable and ridiculous; she effectively distills their factory-made sincerity into one key adjective used in the television’s copy around which you can reflexively map the rest of the speech in your head. Almost like a “name that tune” but for corporate-approved inspiration.
It’s interesting, because, overall, it feels like the most interesting parts of the book are most on the periphery of its narrative. The scenes depicting television are the strongest. The strangers, neighbors, social workers, and roommates are the most outspoken, do the most, think the most, and are consequently pretty interesting. Salim’s father, sister, and his friend Jonathan have odd obsessions that they discuss now and then, but mostly they bear witness to the activities of the strangers, neighbors, roommates, etc., so they’re once-in-a-while, but not regularly, interesting.
And then there’s Salim, who seems to have no feelings or desires outside of generating poetry and sometimes remembering he has to find his mother, and, as the person we spend the most time with, is least interesting. If I had to guess, he’s supposed to represent some sort of sense of alienation/isolation through technology, but we get no hint of this alienation creating any inner turmoil for him. When he goes outside and meets people, he acts exactly the same as he does when alone, so why does he need to stay indoors? He feels more cabinet than human, and if that’s the commentary we are supposed to get about technology’s effect on the youth, that it drains them of all emotions, submerges them in an insurmountable vat of numbness, I think that’s off-the-mark and potentially implies a dispassionate attitude toward humanity.
Another thing that stuck in my craw was a repeated style of paragraph that kept being used throughout, where an “unusual” thesis would be introduced with confidence, and then explored pretty thoroughly, and then cast aside. They’d read like:
“All things have hands. You can find them anywhere. Eye sockets are hands. Nostrils are hands for mucus. Canyons are hands for the sky. Blades of grass have hands they use to capture beads of dew. Gravity itself is one giant hand, holding all of us carefully like a newborn baby, keeping us from falling and hitting our head on a counter.”
And I guess I wouldn’t have minded them so much if they were more interesting, but they were mostly as interesting as the above example, which I just made up. I have a test I use when I read a book where I imagine someone saying portions of the book out loud to me as if we were in a casual conversation, and if I find myself imagining myself being annoyed by what is being said and telling whoever is talking in these scenarios to shut up, I feel confident that it is not good writing. These portions of the book didn’t provide anything other than a more legitimate word count, thereby making it look and feel like a more legitimate novel.
Also one of the blurbs described this book as “hilarious.” Nothing in this book was hilarious. Some of it was pretty funny and smart. If the literary world thinks this book satisfies the criteria for being “hilarious,” said world needs to get outside more.
It’s interesting, because, overall, it feels like the most interesting parts of the book are most on the periphery of its narrative. The scenes depicting television are the strongest. The strangers, neighbors, social workers, and roommates are the most outspoken, do the most, think the most, and are consequently pretty interesting. Salim’s father, sister, and his friend Jonathan have odd obsessions that they discuss now and then, but mostly they bear witness to the activities of the strangers, neighbors, roommates, etc., so they’re once-in-a-while, but not regularly, interesting.
And then there’s Salim, who seems to have no feelings or desires outside of generating poetry and sometimes remembering he has to find his mother, and, as the person we spend the most time with, is least interesting. If I had to guess, he’s supposed to represent some sort of sense of alienation/isolation through technology, but we get no hint of this alienation creating any inner turmoil for him. When he goes outside and meets people, he acts exactly the same as he does when alone, so why does he need to stay indoors? He feels more cabinet than human, and if that’s the commentary we are supposed to get about technology’s effect on the youth, that it drains them of all emotions, submerges them in an insurmountable vat of numbness, I think that’s off-the-mark and potentially implies a dispassionate attitude toward humanity.
Another thing that stuck in my craw was a repeated style of paragraph that kept being used throughout, where an “unusual” thesis would be introduced with confidence, and then explored pretty thoroughly, and then cast aside. They’d read like:
“All things have hands. You can find them anywhere. Eye sockets are hands. Nostrils are hands for mucus. Canyons are hands for the sky. Blades of grass have hands they use to capture beads of dew. Gravity itself is one giant hand, holding all of us carefully like a newborn baby, keeping us from falling and hitting our head on a counter.”
And I guess I wouldn’t have minded them so much if they were more interesting, but they were mostly as interesting as the above example, which I just made up. I have a test I use when I read a book where I imagine someone saying portions of the book out loud to me as if we were in a casual conversation, and if I find myself imagining myself being annoyed by what is being said and telling whoever is talking in these scenarios to shut up, I feel confident that it is not good writing. These portions of the book didn’t provide anything other than a more legitimate word count, thereby making it look and feel like a more legitimate novel.
Also one of the blurbs described this book as “hilarious.” Nothing in this book was hilarious. Some of it was pretty funny and smart. If the literary world thinks this book satisfies the criteria for being “hilarious,” said world needs to get outside more.
May 24, 2025
One of Dorothy Projects 2025 titles. The Endless Week is a hyper contemporary look at family life - following two siblings who engage with the world primarily through their online presence, their father who has many pieces of wisdom that he is trying to impart on his children, and their sick grandmother. Vazquez explores not only family life but also violence and cruelty as can be exasperated by online life. It was hard for me to get into and a little twisted for my personal sensibilities. Look out for The Endless Week which publishes on September 30th.
January 8, 2026
"Do you think God has a favorite language?"
Page after page, profound philosophical examinations on death, humanity, beauty, existence, purpose, morality come in the form of young social media posters. A story woven in a surrealist dreamscape (nightmarescape) brings its own questions about reality.
I want to start a group for readers of this book -- not so much a book club; more like a therapy group. My mind won't recover from this book anytime soon.
Page after page, profound philosophical examinations on death, humanity, beauty, existence, purpose, morality come in the form of young social media posters. A story woven in a surrealist dreamscape (nightmarescape) brings its own questions about reality.
I want to start a group for readers of this book -- not so much a book club; more like a therapy group. My mind won't recover from this book anytime soon.
December 21, 2025
Definitely the weirdest read of the year for me and in all the best ways. It felt like an absurdist fever dream that also made me laugh. A social critique of our digital world and the numbing apathy that comes with it.
Some of the vignettes were so vivid, strange, and even grotesque that you simply couldn’t put them down.
Some of the vignettes were so vivid, strange, and even grotesque that you simply couldn’t put them down.
February 11, 2026
Strange and poetic, the story winds and weaves, backtracks and repeats, propels forward, and meditatively reflects. The language is electric, stream of consciousness, and shifts perspective frequently in a seamless fashion. Put blatantly, this was extremely fun and rewarding to read, if at times convoluted and inaccessible. The translation conveys a dark sense of humor.
February 19, 2026
The best way I could describe this book is as the random thoughts you had as a child, but with the attention span of a high-functioning adult who chooses to sit with each absurd thought for pages. After reading this, I found myself more interested in an autobiography of the author rather than trying to understand whatever the plot of this book was supposed to be.
Read
January 4, 2026“I work on my phone. Right now, I’m reading Google’s confidentiality guidelines backwards. I take a break every three hours to watch videos of obese people being humiliated by a muscular trainer.” I’ve genuinely never read anything like this book.
February 12, 2026
Reading this over the past month as I’ve been tapering off my anti-anxiety meds has been a trip. Felt like old thoughts had mingled with the prose and clawed at my brain without any intent to burrow more deeply.
February 19, 2026
I usually love surrealism but this didn't work for me. I found it long winded at times with random facts that felt unnecessary for the plot. Often reading like, wow I found this cool fact online and want to write about it. It took away from the overall plot for me.
October 12, 2025
génialitop jtm lisez toustes
Read
December 12, 2025Dorothy is my friend;
January 29, 2026
"Words were invented by the dead. All the words that travel through our throats have traveled through the throats of the dead."
Lifting my moratorium on internet novels
Lifting my moratorium on internet novels
Read
February 15, 2026What just happened to me. This felt like what I imagine Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons would have been like if she had lived in the digital age. But with characters and a vague narrative arc.
March 4, 2026
I don't know what I just read.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews