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The Nocilla Trilogy: Nocilla Dream, Nocilla Experience, Nocilla Lab
(Proyecto Nocilla #1-3)
by
A landmark in contemporary Spanish literature, Agustin Fernandez Mallo’s Nocilla Trilogy—Nocilla Dream, Nocilla Lab, and Nocilla Experience—presents multiple narratives of people and places that reflect America and the world in the digital age of the twenty-first century.
In the middle of the Nevada desert stands a solitary poplar tree covered in hundreds of pairs of shoes. ...more
In the middle of the Nevada desert stands a solitary poplar tree covered in hundreds of pairs of shoes. ...more
Paperback, 527 pages
Published
February 19th 2019
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(first published September 24th 2013)
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Start your review of The Nocilla Trilogy: Nocilla Dream, Nocilla Experience, Nocilla Lab

Long time ago
Jorge Luis Borges
has found a miraculous point in which the entire world could be seen and, walking in the master’s footsteps, in his Nocilla Trilogy Agustín Fernández Mallo decided to rediscover this magic locus and observe the whole wide world at once…
How much information is required to describe the entire universe? Could such a description be contained in the memory of a computer? Might we be able to, as per William Blake, see the world in a grain of sand (or as Borges said...more

Mar 16, 2019
Nathan "N.R." Gaddis
added it
So, yeah, if you're curious, this is the kind of book I think should be getting more attention and those others maybe a hair less. It's something that takes the writing of fiction seriously. It's not as mind melting as, say, The Geography of Rebels Trilogy: The Book of Communities, The Remaining Life, and In the House of July & August and is smooth enough to read and its smart and it, well, I just like it. I think your life will be the better if you have a chance to read it. I wish you all well.
...more

"We move through a Present desert delimited by these two illusions, Past and Future."
This is a trilogy of diminishing returns written in a mostly flat, tone-deaf prose. Other readers have called this serious literature, and it is, but perhaps it is too serious and too restrained. Only once do we get a memorable instance of wordplay, in the mediocre (meaty ocher?) first novel, which employs the wonderful portmanteau “skeletowns.” But then never again for the rest of the triptych, and where are th ...more
This is a trilogy of diminishing returns written in a mostly flat, tone-deaf prose. Other readers have called this serious literature, and it is, but perhaps it is too serious and too restrained. Only once do we get a memorable instance of wordplay, in the mediocre (meaty ocher?) first novel, which employs the wonderful portmanteau “skeletowns.” But then never again for the rest of the triptych, and where are th ...more

I read a beautifully packaged edition from FSG, three lovely paperbacks in a fragile slipcase. It's a network of short numbered pieces, some that interlink, paragraph-length attributed quotations, lines from interviews with musicians, the opening voice-over from Apocalypse Now presented several times, each time adding a line, a 50-page single paragraph, a numbered progression of paragraphs, ending with a comic. Inspiring use of random texts at first, inspired in part by the appearance and purcha
...more

I’m not entirely sure what to make of the Nocilla Trilogy as a whole, but I DO know that I had a wonderful time reading it. It’s a little bit of everything all at once, which would be a total recipe for disaster in a less-assured writer’s hands. But Mallo masterfully juggles the countless narrative threads that comprise this trilogy, and the end results are nothing short of astonishing.
The Nocilla Trilogy will undoubtedly be one of my favorite reads of this year. Highly recommended.
The Nocilla Trilogy will undoubtedly be one of my favorite reads of this year. Highly recommended.

if there isn't any space there isn't any light. the world is unthinkable without light. [heraclitus said it, einstein said it, the a-team in episode 237 said it, and many others besides.] and yet, inside everyone's bodies all is darkness, zones in the universe never touched by light—or, if touched by light, only because of illness or decomposition. it's unsettling to think you exist because this death exists inside you, this zone of endless night. it's unsettling to consider that the inside o...more

Book won on Goodreads giveaway.
I don't like to read monotonous, cliched, stereotypical, predictable, biased, etc. stories, ideas, etc. So it is hard to find a book that is unique. Stories/ideas of fiction/non-fiction that have been written in 200 years 1,000 of them written, which nowadays it is difficult to find unique books.
This book is unique. Although some have just recently the past couple of decades have taken the experimental approach in writing something abstract contemporary, some ha ...more
I don't like to read monotonous, cliched, stereotypical, predictable, biased, etc. stories, ideas, etc. So it is hard to find a book that is unique. Stories/ideas of fiction/non-fiction that have been written in 200 years 1,000 of them written, which nowadays it is difficult to find unique books.
This book is unique. Although some have just recently the past couple of decades have taken the experimental approach in writing something abstract contemporary, some ha ...more

This was literary muzak to me. I was excited by it’s form that boasted a new contemporary feeling, but reading through this became placid very fast. I’m not opposed, for example, to getting lost in internet holes vis a vis wikipedia, but this was the literary equivalent of watching someone who shares no common interests with me, clicking around on link after arduous link. It became quite boring, really.

Two and a half stars.
Interesting parts that, disappointingly, failed to add up to anything.
More about the journey than the destination, but at the end it's not clear that it was worth the effort. ...more
Interesting parts that, disappointingly, failed to add up to anything.
More about the journey than the destination, but at the end it's not clear that it was worth the effort. ...more

Agustín Fernández Mallo writes:
"I think ruins become ruins due to their great symbolic potential before they become ruins, while still inhabited, still standing, their symbolic potential, I mean, is so intense that it forces their abandonment lest the people inhabiting be destroyed by excess, by an excess of life, and this abandonment precedes the shift into dreams" ...more
"I think ruins become ruins due to their great symbolic potential before they become ruins, while still inhabited, still standing, their symbolic potential, I mean, is so intense that it forces their abandonment lest the people inhabiting be destroyed by excess, by an excess of life, and this abandonment precedes the shift into dreams" ...more

Thought-provoking and engaging, though sometimes frustratingly overcool and, in an odd way, dated in its supposed ultra-modernity .. still, worth looking at, and unlike most other books I've seen. This is an author who's thinking about the current world in a serious way.
...more

I just received my advance copy in the mail today, and, given the description, I am feeling an odd and quivery excitement about reading this brick of a volume (which is, after all, three whole books).

A collage of essays, interviews, quotations and fiction featuring wide cast of characters, people navigating in-between states. A tree along a lonely stretch of Navada highway, that everyone throws shoes on, in between two small towns, each with a brothel. Residents of a micronation that claim all the borders between countries. An artist-chef that cooks inedible food. Young brothers walking out of Russia through a maze of abandoned pipelines.
Organized, as Mallo has said, in a network structure, ...more
Organized, as Mallo has said, in a network structure, ...more

This is an incredibly beautiful trilogy that blurs the line between poetry and prose - Bunstead's translation is just gorgeous. It was carried by its experimental style and sprawling prose, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for a strong narrative or characters.
I enjoyed the structure of the first two books, following multiple narratives that were sliced up and scrambled together, it was an interesting read. I found the third to be harder to get through (specifically part 1, I only read ...more
I enjoyed the structure of the first two books, following multiple narratives that were sliced up and scrambled together, it was an interesting read. I found the third to be harder to get through (specifically part 1, I only read ...more

Overall a beautiful trilogy to add to any list of Argentinian/South-American literature—though this series holds no bounds. From epitaphs halfway through to sentence long chapters or sections dedicated to quotes, livening the Project through its metaphysical narration, this is one of the best series published in 2019 for the English language (even though it was originally written and released between 2005-2009 in Spanish).

If you love postmodern literature, this pulls out all the stops. I'm not entirely sure if it's truly original or the pinnacle of a cut and paste job on a lot of great influences, but ultimately it doesn't matter much, it's a pretty cool reading experience if you like this sort of thing, which I certainly do.
...more

Sprawling, thought-provoking, mildly frustrating, but more importantly: original. A modern contrivance that mass-produces interpretations. Reading this reminds me of the first time I read The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. Recommended for people who consider plot or characters are not necessary for a novel.

I received this book from a Goodreads giveaway.
I struggled with this one. I'm all for experimentation in art, but I think this was a little too experimental even for me. ...more
I struggled with this one. I'm all for experimentation in art, but I think this was a little too experimental even for me. ...more

FIrst two books were 5 stars; I couldn't finish the third. I could appreciate it, but it wasn't for me.
...more
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Proyecto Nocilla
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