And Other Stories Spanish-Language Reading Group discussion
Opendoor - Iosi Havilio
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But do read opendoor if you love atmosphere and the sound of a laid-back sui generis voice!People, I picked it up yesterday and it provided a bubble to escape into on the tube-strike-day-from-hell on buses round London.
It's very gentle, very beautiful, it doesn't show off at all. Can't wait to read more tonight. Let me know if you'd like to read it.
I think what Rachael wrote about it at the bottom of the page on Havilio on our own website captures it well:
http://www.andotherstories.org/iosi-h...
So, I thought I'd add another comment after finishing it.It's a gem. I'd even dare to say once more that overused and abused word: 'beautiful'.
Maybe the book has something to do with the whole 'slow movement' that crops up in all areas, eg the 'mumblecore' films coming out in the States. There was an interesting article on slow films in Prospect magazine this summer, only online in full for subscribers, but no doubt in a library:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/201...
I liked the article's point about being sympathetic watchers (taking the film on its terms, leaving expectations behind). Mark Cousins also says (if I remember rightly) that he's a really quite hyper person, and so he finds immersion in these more gentle films completely refreshing. Well.. that might be just a little part of the picture for Opendoor I suppose.
Anyone willing to share their thoughts on the book?
Hello Stefan, your comments are inspiring. Any chance I can read this book? I started Pola's, but had to stop because I saw many traces that I don't like from some of the fiction that is being written in Latin America by youngish writers. Let me know if I could have a copy of Opendoor. Cheers, Sara.
Stefan, the quote about the 'slow movement' from the Prospect article you mention are quite fitting for this book. Couldn't read the whole thing as not a subscriber, but it's certainly a book that 'downplays events in favour of mood,evocativeness and an intensified sense of temporality'. The strange mood that pervades the book is no doubt helped by the fact that it seems to be set in a world modernity hasn't yet reached: there are no mobile phones, no computers (aside from an ancient one that appears towards the end), no internet. Someone even sends a telegram at one point! So very different to 'Las teorías salvajes', I might add...Open Door actually exists, too, a village named after the psychiatric institution set up there in the early part of last century.
Is there anyone else out there who's read it?
Opendoor (the name of an open psychiatric institution, but that's not exactly what the novel's about, just one of its fairly disparate elements) is an enigmatic book. Don't read it if you like a tight plot, or any plot at all. It has a weird atmosphere all of its own and a moral relativism (I think) which is either refreshing or an avoidance, I can't decide. It sort of washes over you. Read it on a long journey.