Another one of those dreamy books with considerable navel-gazing that keeps my interest but I'm not sure why. The narrator is seventeen and runs away from home and family with a mysterious, unresponsive man to Zipolite, a Oaxacan beach town with cosmic properties in search of a missing circus troupe of Ukranian dwarfs. Abandoning her companion for the most part, she takes up with a mysterious, unresponsive merman whom she meets nightly for drinks and one-sided conversations. I think of books by Olivia Laing or Deborah Levy in [b:Hot Milk|26883528|Hot Milk|Deborah Levy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1461535043l/26883528._SY75_.jpg|46932640] or Laura van den Berg [b:The Third Hotel|36348514|The Third Hotel|Laura van den Berg|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1512550273l/36348514._SY75_.jpg|58029865]which I've read recently and wonder why I'm drawn to the Great Ennui of these writers. ( )

Aridjis' writing is dreamy in a way that I love, not quite surreal, certainly not magical realist, just... lulling the way that waves can be, if not for our protagonist. Mexico City is a star character in this story, and I'm a bit biased as I delighted in recognizing particular building characters as neighbors in my chosen adopted neighborhood in DF. I also greatly appreciate the reclamation of the bildungsroman, and how deftly literary reference and approachability were interwoven. I do think both the narrative and development lost a little cohesion towards the end, but it might be that world events changed my ability to immerse myself in the feeling of the story. Still enjoyed it and will look for more from this author. ( )

I liked this as I was reading it, its lyrical, short and dreamlike. While the blurb about running away to track down a troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs is what attracted me to the book in the first place the plot is really pretty negligible, its more about young love and impulsive behaviour. I'm finding it hard to remember a whole lot about it now. ( )

The language of this novel is beautiful. So the reading experiences was pleasant. But the plot is not too exciting or appealing: A teenager runs away from her city home to lodge in a hammock on a faraway beach to pursue.....something -- a dream, a treasure, something out of the ordinary. She basically had a long vacation at the beach doing nothing while enjoying a fling with a stranger. The majority of the book focused on how she lounged at the beach doing nothing. There is also a significant portion of the book that described the girl's life in the city, which involved a lot of hanging out with boys, observing various strangers, and reading poetry. Then her father finally tracked down this missing daughter, and she returned home to the city with dad. I can see the novel's theme is about discontentment with life and pursuit of what is beyond the horizon, but I think running away from home to vacation on the beach with money earned by parents is a very irresponsible behavior for teenagers. If the language were not so beautiful, I would have quit this book halfway.

To get a sense of the novel's language, here are some sentences and phrases I liked:

" Someone once said that the dream is the aquarium of the night, but to my mind night was the aquarium of the dream, with our visions framed within it."

"To imagine travel is probably better than actually traveling since no journey can ever satisfy human desire; as soon as one sets out, fantasies get tangled in the rigging and dark birds of doubt begin their circling overhead."

“tall weeds that rose around the house like the soil’s unbrushed hair”
( )

That just did not pay off. I was kinda behind the ennui for a while, but it didn't really go anywhere. Baffled by the father's overindulgent monologue at the end. The home metaphors seemed a bit heavy handed. Ah well. ( )