The Transentients

by Sergio Missana, Jessica Powell (translator)

Tomás Ugarte, an advertising executive in Santiago, Chile, is grappling with a midlife crisis—turning forty, quitting his job and in the midst of a divorce—when he begins to experience inexplicable episodes of amnesia. Hoping to outrace this dilemma, he plans to travel abroad for a year and chart the second half of his life. Instead, he will journey into an unexpected, and very foreign territory, one where the boundary between the self and the other becomes dangerously interchangeable. Much like the works of Auster and Murakami, The Transentients defies easy categorization: it is a genuinely disturbing psychological novel that borders on the uncanny. A bewitching puzzle-box with a propulsive plot, as well as a high-wire act of prose, a metaphysical mystery lies at its core that ensnares both the protagonist and the reader. Stretching from the streets of Santiago onto a treacherous escarpment in the Chilean Andes and to the hills of Valparaiso, and then careening out into the vast beckoning of the Atacama desert, The Transentients traverses the porousness of reality . . . and the malleability of consciousness.

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2010

Reviews

[Kyle C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tomás has just turned forty and, to mark this pivotal moment, has quit his job as an advertising executive and is finalizing his divorce. At the same time, he is experiencing intermittent bouts of perturbing visions and unexplained amnesia. Initially, he believes he is dreaming. Confused by his premonitory hallucinations, he imprisons a homeless woman in his bachelor pad. He tries to track down his ex-wife pursuing her into the desert. Over time, he realizes that in these episodic visions he is actually sharing consciousness with other people and is participating in a fateful web of predestined events. While the premise of interconnected consciousness might seem like a sci-fi cliche, Missana produces a superbly experimental novel. As Tomás inhabits the minds of others, he sees and interacts with people who tangentially intersect with his own life. The narrative becomes intersubjective. Sometimes, it is unclear who is the narrative focus anymore (Tomás? Inés? Matías? Who exactly is who?) There are some brilliantly tragicomic moments when he meets his ex-wife in the body of others. It's like a sci-fi tale of Amphitryon but at the heart of this story is the human desire to have a child.

[Angie]

final inesperado

[Pedro Saavedra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exelente, logra captar el interés y envolverte en diversas vidas unidas por un invisible destino.