Daydreamy. ( )

Ghosts managed to feel expansive in its brevity. The build was slow and had a sort of rollicking pace and while I was wrapped up by the end it took me a while to get into its rhythm.

...strange...! ( )

Very likely the glowing reviews in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and other places set my expectations too high. While not bad, Aira's Ghosts wasn't as experimental or as "chilling" (as the publisher called it) as they claimed; it was a mildly amusing novella with a not particularly surprising ending.

If you're in the market for a short novel that actually fulfills the claims made for this one, I recommend you try Maurice Blanchot's terrific Death Sentence. In fact, I think I'm going to re-read it now. ( )

I liked this one a lot, like I do all of Aira's books, but it had a sad ending and that made me sad. I guess it was inevitable given the story but I still had hopes for something better. ( )