Received in ebook format from http://www.netgalley.com and read on an ipad using kindle software.

I started so well, and after getting into the rhythm of the way the book was written (including near stream of conciousness discourses, paragraphs that last over a page, timelines and narrators chopping and changing), I got about half way through and then simply didnt have the energy to go any further.

So: I think my failure to complete this book is entirely laid at my door. For once I can appreciate the translation (I usually hate books translated into English), I can appreciate that there is a certain lyrical beauty of the story, it just required so much time, effort and concentration at a time that I couldn’t afford it – Perhaps choosing to read this in the run up to Christmas was not the right time to choose!

Could not get into it. Definitely creative and on the horror side of things but also very difficult to follow, or, as the book jacket says, “ambitious and complex”. Not what I need right now. ( )

Three years after Gustavo last spoke to his friend Daniel, he gets a call from the psychiatric ward where Daniel has been held since his fiancée’s murder. Claiming he wishes to confess the truth behind the murder, Daniel asks Gustavo to visit the ward, reeling him into a dark world of Daniel’s past. As Gustavo listens, he realizes the truth will come only if he can piece together the stories Daniel tells with remnants gathered from the life he left behind.

While some translations can suffer from stiff sentences and clipped phrases, the language in The Antiquarian is wonderfully lyrical. It feels as though the beauty in the original work was simply moved onto new pages rather than being rearranged or lost, which is an important detail. Though, at its core, the novel has the plot of a murder mystery, it is the prose and Gothic mood that moves it into a wholly new category.

The Gothic tones that permeate the novel will appeal to readers looking for a contemporary Poe, but Patriau’s answers are buried a bit deeper. For those willing to dive into the madness he creates, The Antiquarian is well worth the ride.

Read more at: www.rivercityreading.com ( )

Literary mystery with overtones of Bolaño

The Antiquarian: A Novel by Gustavo Faverón Patriau, translated by Joseph Mulligan (Grove Press/Black Cat, $16).

A Peruvian literary critic and expert on the work of Roberto Bolaño, Gustavo Faverón Patriau’s debut novel is a stunning work that shows the influence of Bolaño.

The protagonist is a psycholinguist, also named Gustavo, who is called to visit his friend Daniel in a mental institution, where he has been committed for murdering his bride-to-be. But it’s not that simple; the narrative slips into the past, when Gustavo and Daniel were friends; there is the story of Daniel’s missing sister; and Daniel’s obsession with antiquarian books that leads to a ring of criminals dealing in stolen body parts.

The Antiquarian is fabulous in the sense of being fable-like, with a narrative uncertainty that is more common to experimental fiction. Consider it a literary mystery of the highest order, and put this on your summer reading list.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com ( )

This is a complex novel that combines several fiction genres: crime/detective, horror, psychological thriller, magical realism and literary. Patriau uses a stream of consciousness narrative with Gustavo—presumably himself—who seeks to understand a double murder of two women named Juliana committed by his friend, Daniel. Daniel was convicted of the crime but judged to be insane and thus placed in an asylum. Daniel’s sister suffered from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disease that causes extreme elasticity of the skin and joints. Daniel thinks that he also suffers from a variant of the syndrome “that doesn’t effect my skin or my bones, but my imagination.” Thus, he proves to be frustratingly illusive but does provide his friend with a series of obscure clues, which Gustavo tenaciously explores to the eventual outcome.

Occupying Gustavo’s mind, the reader is presented with the clues in a confusing and haphazard way. This can be challenging but also makes for a compelling read. Gustavo is intelligent—a psycho-linguist (?)—and highly observant. This puts the reader in the position of sifting through multiple clues some of which may be significant while others are extraneous. Once the puzzle is solved, many of the earlier clues become obvious (e.g., the listing of famous people who were executed by burning first appearing at the beginning of the novel). There are some horrible scenes, the plot lacks a simple timeline and there are numerous obscure references. These can be off-putting, but the intellectual challenges are enticing and the eventual solution is totally satisfying. However, this complexity suggests that it may not capture the kind of readership that other simpler genre fiction enjoys. Other reader reviews on Librarything and Goodreads seem to confirm this unfortunate conclusion.

Patriau sets the novel in an unnamed Latin American city, which effectively evokes the mysterious settings in novels by Poe and Conan Doyle. The city and the asylum have a synchronicity, which plays an important role in the plot.

The novel suffers from much repetition that is probably necessary to build suspense and emphasize significant clues, but the reader can easily skip over many of them. Similarly, the rationale for the inclusion of narratives describing the antiquarian—placed in italics at the end of chapters—seems obscure and these don’t seem to elucidate anything that is not already adequately covered in the main narrative. ( )