I just don't read things like this very often . . . modern fiction . . . not even sure how to identify worthy items in this category. (When it comes to fiction, I typically stick with works that have stood the test of time - I'll never work through that list anyway, and the hit rate for quality is very high. But this was a referral, and a good one.)
The author - who died before this project was entirely finished - wrote five separate novels, and probably intended to issue them as such. Some overlapping elements across the five; more not-overlapping elements. Differing styles across the five novels. His executors decided to publish it all together in one 900-page book.If there's a center to the book, it is the fictional city of Santa Teresa in Sonora (Mexico) - across the Arizona border; a growing, changing maquiladora town from the 1990s (if that term is still used). Industry, narcos, unsophisticated workers drawn from villages. Modeled on Ciudad Juarez (though that's across the border from El Paso). Anyway, literally hundreds of women were killed in Ciudad Juarez in largely unsolved crimes in those years, and fictional Santa Teresa is going through the same trauma.
Book 1: four professors who made a career out of literary criticism of the works of a long-unseen, aged (if still alive), obscure (until these four raised his profile) German novelist named Archimboldi (odd pseudonym) decide to track him down. The trail leads to Santa Teresa; they are hosted around town by Amalfitano, who teaches at the local university.
Book 2: Amalfitano is having a hard time in Santa Teresa; back story about his emigration from Spain and his wife leaving him (she also doesn't have it easy); Amalfitano is raising their daughter, experiencing great tension in the city especially with a growing-up daughter; losing it mentally. A book hangs on his clothesline.
Book 3: Fate; an African-American journalist doing a story in Detroit; ends up in Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match because the sportswriter for his publication died; he learns of the killings, meets up with Amalfitano and his daughter; encounters creepy characters; I got really nervous wondering how this would play out.
Book 4: the crimes - the author goes into details about the murders (taking place in 1990s into early 2000s) - I just dealt with this in a manner similar to how I deal with too-violent movies - though skipping graphs instead of covering my eyes. Law enforcement struggles; corrupt or incompetent or whatever; the atmosphere in maquiladora towns in those days; a very tall 40-something American citizen (emigrated to the U.S. from Germany) ends up in prison accused of murders, but the killing doesn't even pause while he is in jail.
Book 5: Archimboldi's story; he grows (very tall) up in interwar Germany and loves being in the sea; various odd jobs as washes out of school; a series of searing experiences in the 1930s continuing as he works his way through WWII in the German army - mostly eastern front (Romania); encounters a baroness who he had met at one of his first jobs; falls in love with a mentally ill girl; living in bombed-out Cologne in post-war years; does some writing and after quite a bit of struggle is identified by a respectable publishing house; eventually a bit of a link to some elements from other stories.
The several plot threads are one thing, and plenty fascinating in their own right (and leave one mulling, just on that level). But there's much more. The reader encounters various asides and detours of gorgeous writing and imagination - for example just out of book 5 - Ansky's notes or the typewriter renter's ideas about writing. I need to go back through some of those riffs and try to understand why the author included them, how they fit into the plot lines, etc. Plus they're just fun to read.
The graphic and poetic intermingle somehow, if that communicates anything.
Threads are not tied together, no resolution to much of anything, characters show up and are skillfully developed to where I'm interested in them, then they disappear. The reader is left to do a lot of mulling, which is what I like.
Glad I own the book, will go back through and flip, and think, or wonder, or something.
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