Nocilla Experience

Proyecto Nocilla #2

by Agustín Fernández Mallo

Nocilla Experience es un caleidoscopio ficcional, donde cabe todo menos el sopor. Harold acaba su última caja de cereales, deja conectada su primitiva videoconsola y decide recorrer Norteamérica durante un lustro. Un tipo que maneja las grúas del puerto de Nueva York diseña una casa para suicidas. En Basora, un marine se enamora de una irakí en el instante en que la encañona. Un tal Julio da forma a una Rayuela alternativa. Sandra vuela de Londres a Palma de Mallorca al tiempo que se resuelve el misterio del incendio de la Torre Windsor. El capitán Willard sigue esperando en Saigón aquella misión: nunca imaginó lo especial que sería. Hay gente que utiliza los oleoductos vacíos subterráneos de la antigua Unión Soviética para cruzar las fronteras. Un cocinero proyecta cocinar el horizonte. Nocilla Experience es un caleidoscopio ficcional, donde cabe todo menos el sopor, incluso las enseñanzas de un código samurái, sin olvidar las andanzas de un elenco de protagonistas con rarezas de primera magnitud que no son más que la expresión de su radical soledad. Un libro con muchos ecos: de la literatura de Perèc al cine de Jarmusch, pasando por Coppola. Reseñas:
«Cada página es un disparo lleno de poesía y desolación, un relato que podría dar origen a otro libro, un destello de intuiciones desconcertantes a veces, aterradoras otras, y emocionantes.»
Nuria Azancot, El Cultural «Una aventura narrativa que no debería pasar desapercibida.»
Juan Bonilla «Este libro, según me atrevo a arriesgar, se convertirá en un hito de la narrativa en castellano del siglo XXI.»
Nelson Rivera, El Nacional de Caracas «Agustín Fernández Mallo entrega una novela seria, trabajada, aparejada con su propia poética. Este libro salta, está vivo. Y habla de cosas que conciernen a los lectores de mañana (que deben empezar a serlo hoy).»
Jose María Pozuelo Yvancos, ABCD «Cuánto bien le hace a los narradores compartir la ambición de los poetas. Ser poetas. La regeneración de nuestra lengua dependerá de mantener ese hálito. De momento, Fernández Mallo ha traído una gran alegría a los que amamos este mundo, porque nos mejora a todos y demuestra que el futuro es ya.»
Gabi Martínez, Qué Leer «La primera parte del Proyecto Nocilla, una maquinación literaria que llega para lavar la cara de los géneros literarios (...) Virtuoso experimento.»
Use Lahoz, El Periódico de Cataluña

Genres: Fiction, Spanish Literature, Spain, 21st Century, Literature, Short Stories, Comics

206 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2008

About the author

Agustín Fernández Mallo (A Coruña, 1967) es un físico y escritor español afincado en Palma de Mallorca. Es uno de los miembros más destacados de la llamada Generación Nocilla, Generación Mutante o Afterpop, cuya denominación más popular procede del título de una serie de sus novelas.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Globalization: the entire world is entwined with the computer web so the volumes of trashy information multiplied immeasurably… And similar to good taste, bad taste needs to be cultivated but the process is much easier…

She knows that all the interesting fashion and art originates in London, later going on to Milan or New York to be refined and disseminated… In the souvenir shop at the Natural History Museum, which is next to Sandra’s study rooms, they sell a dinosaur key ring with a compass for a brain. Sandra has always hated the feeling of being disoriented, so whenever she takes the Tube she removes the key ring from her bag and keeps her eye on the magnetic ball; this way she can always tell which direction the train is traveling. People think she must be taking part in an urban game, with teams searching for objects hidden in different places around the city.

Sandra studies dinosaurs, Marc is hooked on a game of Parchís and everyone in the book is bitten by one’s own special bug. Suddenly the ghost of Julio Cortázar appears and participates in dialogues, the apparitions of pop stars and movie actors are also regularly present. Strange math, bizarre theories, odd scientific concepts and weird doings are in abundance… In the creative world, only the craziest will survive… Loneliness is a lot of any creative being and every true artist must be a member of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club…

Fermions are characterized by the widely demonstrated fact that only one can occupy a particular state at any given time, or, what is the same, that two or more cannot occupy the same spatial distribution. Bosons have the opposite properties: not only can more than one be in the same state and share the same spatial distribution, they in fact try to mass together, they need to. Marc uses this classification as both his image and his model in postulating the existence of solitary people who, like fermions, cannot stand to be around others, and are the only kind of people deserving of any respect. Then there is the other kind, those who cluster together, boson-like, in the form of associations, groups, and other collectives – hoping to hide their genetic mediocrity in the crowd.

Tyrannosaurus rex never knew its scientific name and did care least.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The follow up to Nocilla Dream. My Nutella themed review here (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)

I have never known quite what to think of Ferrero Rocher (invented of course by the same person who named Nutella) – on one hand I have always wanted to believe that any pretension towards being a sophisticated chocolate is ironical (with the much copied and heavily parodied adverts, the bling gold wrapping and the plastic tray) but have never been sure that it is intended that way.

I would like to think that any pretensions of this book to being serious experimental literature are also ironical (with the copying of pop interviews – the writer of Jeremy and Alive apparently thinks the best songs are 2 minutes fifty - the popular science and the odd attempts to extend on it – my particular “favourite” was the discussion of the inclusion of dice in Ludo rendering it far more complex for a computer to play than chess) and I think there is evidence of this (for example using a hollowed dice to give a meta-review of the Nocilla project):

“.. in a hollow perforated dice, the chance previously incubated inside is exposed, and if not, it is anyway a dry and banal sort of chance; a chance with neither force or content”

Or the last words, which echoed , my own views

“Are we done? Can I go?”

But I am not entirely sure it is intended this way.

(NB – Nocilla is a Spanish version of Nutella)

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nocilla Experience is volume two of a trilogy. I read volume one (Nocilla Dream) the day before I read this one i.e. I read them back to back. The final instalment (Nocilla Lab) is due to be published in English by Fitzcarraldo Editions in January 2019 (just 2-3 weeks after my reading of these first two instalments).

There are some key similarities between Dream and Experience (multiple short chapters, mixture of fact and fiction, non-linear, multi-person narratives that swirl around one another). But I think the the titles are apt for the way the books feel. The first book (Dream) has a dream-like quality to it - it swirls around a tree in the Nevada desert and somehow the text has a desert-like atmosphere. This second book feels much more “reality based” even though it still contains plenty of bizarre happenings.

I liked the way Dream kept coming back to the tree in the desert and I liked the desert feel of the narratives. In Experience, I missed both these and I have to say I didn’t enjoy the book quite so much. The narratives still mix together and gradually connect, but there isn’t so much of a central point for them to coalesce around and the writing has a very different feel to it. It is still a fascinating book to read, but somehow it lacked the magic for me. I expect others to have exactly the opposite view because both books push boundaries and take their readers on a journey where what happens in your brain as you read is probably more important than any story being told (although there really isn’t a story!).

We meet a lot of people obsessed with things in this volume. There is a man painting all the chewing gum stuck to the pavements and another man trying to eat all the corn-flakes with a sell-by date the same as the date of his wife’s death. These are just two examples. One of the characters lives on a rooftop and hangs mathematical formulae on a clothes line. If you have read Bolano’s 2666, that will sound very familiar (I highlighted it as I read it and made a note to check it out). The interesting thing is that in a final section called “Clarifications”, Mallo says he has NOT read 2666! This is something he says is a way of confirming the fact that, whether we want to or not, in the end we all go back to the hidden threads of a literature that is outside our control.

Mallo coined the term post-poetry:

Agustín Fernandez Mallo is a physicist and writer. In the year 2000 he created the term “Post-poetic poetry” – connections between literature and the sciences. (see http://lab.cccb.org/en/author/agustin...)

In the credits, he says that the Nocilla trilogy is a project which seeks to transfer certain aspects of my theory of ‘post-poetry’ to fiction.

It certainly makes for fascinating and entertaining reading. I should add “if you like that kind of thing” to the end of that sentence really as this is not everyone’s idea of a good book - it is very different and the ratings on Goodreads show it is not universally liked. But, I think that if you can treat it as some kind of experiment in poetry, fiction and science and if you are the kind of person who likes books that suggest or hint rather than tell, then this trilogy might be for you.

[Radioread · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nocilla Rüyası yalnızca bir ısınma hareketiymiş meğer.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of the same. In fact, it's interesting that Mallo wrote this as a trilogy and not one book. The format is the same, numbered chapters, but it's far messier this time around. In book 1 we had the tree in the desert covered in hanging shoes, as a sort of centrepiece for everything else to orbit around. We don't get that here. This is a real confetti-mess of stuff: a few recurring characters again, lots of Julio Cortázar and references to his book Hopscotch (replacing the Borges references of the first book), snippets of interviews from musical legends, quotes from Samurai texts, a repeated quote from Apocalypse Now, etc. Mallo still exploring his own coined term, 'post-poetry'. As I'm reading it as one book, I will be running straight into the final book, Nocilla Lab now. I'm already imagining it'll be much the same, again.

[Korcan Derinsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nocilla Üçlemesi’nin ikinci kitabı Nocilla Deneyimi, tıpkı ilk kitap Nocilla Rüyası gibi geleneksel anlatı yapısını tamamen reddeden, postmodern ve deneysel bir metin. Yazar ilk kitapta başlattığı “parçalı dünya” fikrini burada daha da derinleştiriyor ve yine tek bir konuya ya da karaktere odaklanmak yerine çok sayıda farklı figürün düşünce kırıntılarını, yaşantılarını, notlarını ve fikirlerini peş peşe diziyor. İlk kitaptan farkı bu kez daha fazla kurmaca dışı referansa yer vermesi. Popüler kültürden bilimsel teorilere, reklam sloganlarından şiirlere kadar her şey metne sızıyor ve ortaya bir Google arama geçmişi çıkıyor adeta. Yazar bir fikrin peşinden giderken başka bir fikre sıçrıyor, o sıçramaların kendisi de metni oluşturuyor. İlk kitaba göre hikayeler/karakterler arası bağ daha kuvvetli, takibi kolaylaştırıyor bu da. Eleştirim ise ilk kitapta yer alan rüya atmosferinin burada yerini daha gerçek bir atmosfere bırakmasına. Bu anlatım tercihine öyle bir atmosfer daha uygun sanki ama tabii bu çok kişisel bir yorum.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Josecho was a fervent practitioner of an aesthetic tendency he himself had termed ‘transpoetic fiction’, which consisted of creating hybrid artefacts somewhere between science and what is traditionally known as ‘literature’.
 
Nocilla Experience, translated by Thomas Bunstead, is the 2nd volume of Agustín Fernández Mallo's Nocilla Trilogy.
 
My reviews of Part I, Nocilla Dream, and Part III, Nocilla Lab, largely cover the trilogy: 
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
 
Given how different Dream and Lab are, it was rather disappointing to find that Experience rather repeats the format of Dream, with just a variation in theme, and also does so in a way that also doesn't particularly draw the two other parts of the trilogy together.  

Here the literary touchpoint for the novel shifts from Borges to Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch, "Julio" appearing as a character in this novel who claims to have also written a Hopscotch B which concerns the mathematical concepts of open and closed balls. And rather than the interstitial territories of Lab, attention here shifts to both the skins of things (the only place the light reaches) and also to the horizon.

3.
Sandra flies from London to Palma de Mallorca. Barely 1 hour, the orbit of the Earth on pause. She flicks through the in-flight magazine, British Airways News. Reports on wine production in Ribeiro and Rioja, the latest hightech architecture in Berlin, mail-order Majorica pearls. A tear falls onto a photo of a Caribbean beach, but the beach has not pricked it from her, and neither has the Caribbean, nor the gravity to which all tears are subject. She looks out the window, looks ahead, sees neither clouds nor earth. Here, the verification of something she already knew: on aeroplanes, there is no horizon.

I spotted one recurring character and cross-reference from the world of Dream into that of Experience, the poetry of Hannah from Utah (first introduced in chapter 26 of Dream, and read by Josecho in chapter 57 of Experience), which makes me think there might be more - or like in Rachel Cusk's recent trilogy and the name of the narrator, perhaps there is just one mention in each book.
 
See Neil's review for a more detailed take and one which does bring some distinctive features of Experience - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - although I note he two shared the relative disappointment.   Indeed I would go so far as to say one could safely skip this volume of the trilogy and proceed straight from 1 to 3.
 
3 stars (2.75).

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is more of the same from the first book in the trilogy, Nocilla Dream. Lots of little sketches and events, all of them brief, slowly advancing weird stories of interconnections around the globe, intercut with news stories, interviews, historical facts, etc. Just like the first one, there is a vague, off-the-page meaning to everything that is really compelling. My only problem with this one is that in the last 30 pages, Mallo seems to lose grip on what little snapshots are actually interesting and I found my enjoyment waning. Still, the first 130 pages are fantastic, and that's pretty solid. Overall, really enjoyed it, and the last 30 pages weren't terrible, just not as wonderful as the first large chunk of the novel. Still looking very much forward to reading the last book in the trilogy.

[küb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Üçlemenin ilki olan Nocilla Rüyası biraz daha deneysel, birbirleriyle dağınık eşlesen parçalar şeklinde bir kitaptı. Nocilla Deneyimi ise daha keskin, net ve çok iyi kurgulanmış hikaye parçalarına sahip. Öyle ki birbirinden bağımsız hikayeler arasında illaki olmalı dediğiniz bağlantıyı kurma çabasına dönüşüyor okuma zevki. Daha önce okuduğum hiçbir şeye benzememesinden çok keyif aldım. Serinin son kitabını sabırsızlıkla bekliyorum.

[Alessia Scurati · Rating 1 out of 5]

Scena 1.
Io che scelgo i libri. Ana li passa per vedere cosa mi sono presa.
-Questo qui è scritto in modo strano.
(Okay, noi ci parliamo in spagnolo ma il senso è quello)
-Ovvero?
-Fernández Mallo scrive un po’ così. Da gamberra.
-Ah, ok.

Prime 20 pagine. Io che penso “Non è una questione che scrive da gamberra, la questione è: cosa sto leggendo? Non capisco niente!”
Poi ho capito.
Allora, l’errore principale è avere una postazione che spiega a scrittura, ma non un’introduzione. Perché nella postfazione l’autore spiega questo:
«Este libro responde al intento de trasladar ciertos aspectos de la poesía postpoética, que en su día teoricé, al ámbito de la narrativa».
L’avessero messo in un’introduzione, uno farebbe la metà della fatica.
Invece, lo han messo alla penultima pagina. Così il lettore deve andare per intuizione. La mia si è accesa quando sono iniziati i riferimenti a Rayuela, il romanzo di Cortázar. Ho capito il senso della struttura. Praticamente si tratta di alcune storie raccontate in modo frammentario - prima parte al capitolo 3, la seconda all’11, per dire. In mezzo ci sono: 1.le storie che si concatenano; 2.Citazioni di film, intervisti di musicisti, ma solo quelli cool e indie della scena ’90 (ovvero quelli come P.J. Harvey, Bjørk, Radiohead e consimili che ormai sono mainstream), film, letteratura, manuali di samurai.

L’autore si bea nella citazione e nella rielaborazione colta. Anche troppo. Cioè, alla fine diventa un esercizio onanistico, guarda quanto sono bravo, guarda quante cose so. Tante, eh. Ma magari anche meno, perché le tue storie, autore, dove sono?
Cortázar diceva che se una storia funziona deve metterti KO. Ma KO nel senso che deve essere un colpo secco allo stomaco. A me, invece, sono solo scese ripetutamente le palpebre.
Tanto fumo, ma tanto. Arrosto poco poco poco.
Mai più.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exceptional, if disparate. Experience is fragments, gestures, piled or drifting--various moments of repose.

There's a tumble to it, one readily captivating. Borges was the leitmotif of the first installment while Cortazar ruminates here, he appears and unlike a Hitchcock cameo, the Argentine alters the pattern, a seismology of the subconscious. Experience occupies an obscure corner, perhaps with Sorrentino and Kluge.

I am reluctant to plunge into the third straight away.

[Online Stig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastiskt!!!

[Tommi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second installment in Mallo’s trilogy which “seeks to transfer certain aspects of my theory of ‘post-poetry’ to fiction,” as he phrases it himself in the book. (In the first book, he calls it “docu-fiction.”) Experience is as heavy as Dream, but I think he manages to combine hard science and fiction much better here than in the predecessor. Very enjoyable and, despite the difficult subject matter, entertaining. It’s quick to read because the 112 chapters are all very short.

[AB · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly feel quite disappointed by this one. I loved Nocilla Dream and put down several other books to hopefully find the same enjoyment in Nocilla Experience but it did not quite materialize.

Experience seems to focus more on shared ideas, objects, experiences, and reiterations of select scenes. Most notably a scene from Apocalypse Now is repeated several times, each time adding another sentence. Or a radio is described in an abandoned complex with an announcer saying different things each time. There are still characters and settings that end up crossing paths but they don't seem as meaningful as in Dreams. Here, the meaningful connections mostly deal with concepts.
What charmed me about Dreams was the connection of people and places. It was a novel outlook. Finding meaningful connections between isolated people and places.The focus on shared ideas in Experience just did not seem as interesting or revelatory.

I still found an enjoyment in reading the book. I enjoyed the epilogue and parts of the main text but it felt like more of a novelty than anything really compelling. Who knows, maybe I'll change my mind in the coming days but I don't think that my opinion that Dreams is much better will change.

[Tobias Eriksson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Minst lika bra som ”Drömmen”

[Andrés Santiago · Rating 4 out of 5]

No sé qué pensar de este libro, no creo que sea la maravilla que dicen algunos, pero tampoco la mierda pinchada en un palo que dicen otros... Mallo no escribe mal, pero entre tanta cita (literaria, cinematográfica...), repeticiones y guiños a Cortázar, Coppola... lo que realmente escribe él queda reducido a poco. De todos modos, tiene buenos momentos (imágenes, a veces parece el guión o el storyboard de una pelí­cula) y al menos se arriesga, cosa que no se puede decir de la mayor parte de escritores nacionales.

[Sam Ryckaert · Rating 3 out of 5]

slippery and oblique in ways that “dream” wasn’t, without the potent object of fixation which that novel found in a tree in the nevada desert. the narratives woven between fragments are more tightly constructed, but mallo seems less interested in tonal coherence here, offering the reader a patchwork novel whose pieces seem to hold each other at arm’s length.

also, wondering who “lab” will have as its totem-writer: first borges, then cortázar…hoping for bolaño next, if mallo got around to reading 2666 after publishing this

[Paolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cosa studiare fisica fa ad un disgraziato con velleità letterarie

[Defne Doğan · Rating 5 out of 5]

şu ana kadar okuduğum EN İYİ ROMAN ve bu üçlünün ikincisini tesadüfen bulup aldım. bir film vardı bayılarak resmen etkisinde kaldığım aynı yapıda resmen… yaşarken denk geldiğim bu güzellik için çok şanslı hissediyorum ☝🏻🙂‍↔️

[Omar Abu samra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite dizzy

[Sümeyye Yıldız]

esrik.

[Alejandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Experimental and heavy, but with a very special feeling to it. The author fails to develop some stories to their fullest potential, but nevertheless it is the kind of book that tries to transcend and take literature to the future.

[David Waldorf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Precioso. Escrito con pedazos de historias que poco tienen que ver entre sí pero que te sacan una sonrisa. Mil historias ideales para ir leyendo en el transporte público o para disfrutar poco a poco.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book doesn’t need a plot to be interesting but it does need to be interesting.

[Evan Pincus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I'm finding these decently likable, as they're engaging pretty deeply with a lot of stuff I'm either interested in or simply like, but this is definitely more of the same offered by Nocilla Dream - this one's more Euro-centric than American, but it hardly feels like a second book at all. I by and large find this more interesting when it's wrestling with fake art rather than the real stuff - the fake Robert Smithson photograph in Dream or the conceptual restaurants and hypothetical architectural projects that litter this one are a lot funnier and frequently more compelling than "she listened to The Avalanche by Sufjan Stevens before seeing a Deerhoof concert" (the music here is so early p4k, oh my god) or "Julio Cortázar is here to discuss the mathematical theories that undergird Hopscotch," although I will say I did like the ultra-weird (and thankfully unspecified - if this named the movie, I certainly wouldn't be so quick to forgive) invocation of Forrest Gump's run as a metaphor for societal interconnection, mostly because it didn't belabor that metaphor; as far as this book's film references go it certainly gave me a lot more to hang my hat on than the seemingly deliberate evocation of Egoyan's Exotica as compared to Jarmusch's Ghost Dog that caps it all off. Curious about the way this trilogy ultimately deals with the fetish for outsider art, because this is filled with outsider artists both real (the last book opened with a Daniel Johnston epigraph and this one has Henry Darger as a recurring topic) and invented, and while it doesn't seem to find much nobility in solitude/"outsider-ness," it's certainly packed with characters who strive for that state in various ways and for various reasons. Is this actually reflecting on the complicated nature of "outsider" art and artists or is it Mallo himself identifying/self-styling as one of those? I wonder if I'll find any answers in the ostensibly pseudo-autobiographical third installment? Probably not, but I imagine I'll end up going down a few new rabbit holes.

[Konstantin R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

[rating = A]
One of my: Best Books of the Year (for 2022)

Though this is, apparently, the second installment (oops, didn't see that on the back cover), it read brilliantly all the same. In a very postmodern-experimentalist style, this book blends fiction and non-fiction in curious and interesting ways. Focusing on a small cast of characters and how they, sometimes, come into contact with each other or at least deal in the same cultural spheres (art, science life, communication). Also mixed in are snippets of real interviews with artists and other news items recounted by a radio "a laborer left switched on..." in a huge dome building devoted to the game of "parchis."

What is most fascinating is the way each chapter (very short, only one to three paragraphs usually) is equally engaging and makes the read think. These artists and loners are weird and intriguing. Steve is a chef who cooks the horizon (the horizon also plays a dominant role and theme throughout the book) and cooks dolls and other inedible objects; J or Jodorkovski is an artist who paints over chewing gum on sidewalks; Anton wants to mix barnacles and the information stored on hard disks, to form a creature that absorbs the data into their DNA; and other oddballs who see the world differently.

It is a masterful novella that engages in scientific thought, cultural discussions, and humanity as it moves forward into the future. A work about artists and for artists (and those who just want a strange amalgamation of facts and dialogue and human experiences) that seems futuristic in its foresight and has a wonderful grasp of what it is to be human, to seek out others and seek out information and connection as well as independence and solitude.

[Jeff Lewonczyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second book of Mallo's experimental trilogy about postmodern life. As in the first volume (Nocilla Dream), it's structured in the form of short vignettes, most less than a page long, which mix fiction, journalism and philosophy into a single, eerie reading experience. The book is literally haunted by the ghost of Argentinean experimental writer Julio Cortazar, whose opus Hopscotch is referenced both directly and implicitly throughout, as Cortazar appears as a ghostly figure to many of the characters. The theme is where we do and don't connect with other people, and the images are often extended metaphors for isolation and networks, as viewed with the dispassionate eye of a scientist (Mallo's day job is theoretical physicist) - overall it's cold but interesting reading.

[Adrian Doan · Rating 3 out of 5]

a collage. moving beyond traditional literature. perhaps I’m of the uninitiated, but who has time for this nonsense when there’s so much to read and days are so short.

Then again, maybe there is something here about contemporary experience, consumption of ideas. Lots of seemingly disjoint fragments. Easily consumable bits. Incomplete stories of various degrees of deliriousness, mixed in with scientific rambling that’s either nonsense or too advanced, functionally the same.

but the vignettes ultimately feel a bit too weird. contemporary art. now back to the classics; if I have the strength of concentration

[Andrei Johann · Rating 4 out of 5]

" Anyway, it got late. We both had to go, but it was very wonderful seeing Sandra again. I understood that she was a really great person, and how lucky I'd been to know her. And I remembered that old joke, you know the one, the guy going to the psychiatrist and saying, 'Doctor, my brother's gone mad, he thinks he's a chicken.' And the doctor says, 'Ok, well why don't you have him committed?' And the guy says, 'I would, it's just that I need the eggs.' And, anyway, I think this is a good way of expressing my feelings about relationships. They're completely irrational, off-the-wall, absurd, but most of us keep on with them because we need the eggs. "

[Puri Perez Gomez · Rating 4 out of 5]

La primera vez que lo leí, no pase de 10 páginas, ahora lo retomé y me gusto, es una historia coral, narrada en tercera persona, donde se juntan historias reales con las imaginadas, pasamos por varias ciudades, y donde el autor al ser físico nos plantea varias dudas. Las historias se van relacionando entre sí, mezclándose con partes de películas y fragmentos de entrevistas. El libro es corto y lo recomiendo, no os dejéis llevar por el título y la portada.