Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli

Today’s post will be another short book review because I had a busy day and have been feeling very lethargic recently. Also, I’ve been blasting through Schitt’s Creek and would like to get back to that. So now, for my seventh mini-book review of 2021:

Faces in the Crowd tells the story of the narrator, an unnamed Spanish-English translator working for a small publishing company in modern (ish, the book was published in 2011 and it’s unclear exactly when it takes place) New York as she becomes obsessed with a relatively obscure and not often translated early-mid 20th century Mexican poet named Gilberto Owen (who I did have to Google, and he is real). As the story continues, the book transitions between the translator and Owen himself narrating his life in New York over half a century prior. The lines between their two existences blur and their stories become increasingly interwoven.

I'm glad I read this book because I'm trying to branch out more into both works in translation and books from indie presses (ask me how I feel about Penguin/Random House acquiring Simon & Schuster [hint: it is not a positive feeling]), and this book checks off both of those boxes. Stylistically, it is also unlike anything I've ever read. The narrative style is fragmented and at times slightly poetic, and rather than being divided into chapters or parts it's simply broken up by asterisks into small sections. It's never explicitly indicated whose perspective we're in either, a la Virginia Woolf, but it's also never unclear. Additionally, the text becomes meta as the narrator's husband starts to read her manuscript and elements of the book she's writing and her own life start to influence each other.

Overall, I think this is a really interesting work and I always love being exposed to new writers and styles. My main critique is it's a bit pretentious, as books about writers often are, and it's full of references to other poets and poetry that I didn’t fully understand. I don’t think that’s a problem necessarily, and books often should encourage their reader to branch out and read other writers, but I do feel like I would have gotten more out of the book if I was more familiar with the work of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Joshua Zvorsky, who were all characters in the sections about Owen. It kind of reminded me of Midnight in Paris, but not as fun and light-hearted and without the pleasant side-affect of feeling intelligent because I understood the references.

Also, will I pick up a book of poetry by any of these men? Probably not, because there are only so many hours in a day. I do enjoy poetry though so maybe I should reprioritize at some point.

Anyway, I hope whoever is reading this has had a lovely weekend. Let’s see what the week ahead will bring.