You've been hearing me talk about this book for years. I encountered it, and its author, my first semester in graduate school, back in 2005. Now Carolina De Robertis is winning the praises of the wider world, not only of her partisan (but critically acute!) friends.
From the SF Chronicle Sunday Book Review:
'The Invisible Mountain'.
From the SF Chronicle Sunday Book Review:
'The Invisible Mountain'.
Writing is energy, someone once reminded me. And by comparison with much writing that mumbles along, polite and bloodless, Carolina De Robertis' debut novel fairly bellows into life. A galloping saga of three generations - particularly their women - a partial chronicle of the countries of Uruguay and Argentina, and a celebration of art and language, it's a hugely ambitious work: De Robertis (who was reared abroad by Uruguayan parents, has relatives in both countries, and now lives in Oakland) has flung herself into it with no sacrifice of detail. In fact lavish, almost pointillistic detail seems to power her project. While grounded in actual history, the story commences with a squirt of magical realism, folding in generous amounts, thereafter, of Dickensian coincidence. But such is its full-tilt exuberance that a reader finds herself caught up and swept away.