Secret Rendezvous

by Kōbō Abe, Juliet Winters Carpenter (Translator)

From the acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes comes Secret Rendezvous, the bizarrely erotic and comic adventures of a man searching for his missing wife in a mysteriously vast underground hospital.

From the moment that an ambulance appears in the middle of the night to take his wife, who protests that she is perfectly healthy, her bewildered husband realizes that things are not as they should be. His covert explorations reveal that the enormous hospital she was taken to is home to a network of constant surveillance, outlandish sex experiments, and an array of very odd and even violent characters. Within a few days, though no closer to finding his wife, the unnamed narrator finds himself appointed the hospital’s chief of security, reporting to a man who thinks he’s a horse. With its nightmarish vision of modern medicine and modern life, Secret Rendezvous is another masterpiece from Japan’s most gifted and original writer of serious fiction.

Genres: Fiction, Japan, Japanese Literature, Horror, Literature, Novels, Classics

179 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Kōbō Abe (安部 公房 Abe Kōbō), pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe, was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer, and inventor.

He was the son of a doctor and studied medicine at Tokyo University. He never practised however, giving it up to join a literary group that aimed to apply surrealist techniques to Marxist ideology.

Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities.

He was first published as a poet in 1947 with Mumei shishu ("Poems of an unknown poet") and as a novelist the following year with Owarishi michi no shirube ni ("The Road Sign at the End of the Street"), which established his reputation. Though he did much work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, it was not until the publication of The Woman in the Dunes in 1962 that he won widespread international acclaim.

In the 1960s, he collaborated with Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara in the film adaptations of The Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another and The Ruined Map. In 1973, he founded an acting studio in Tokyo, where he trained performers and directed plays. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977.

Reviews

[Fernando · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Un camino de serpientes sólo te lleva a más serpientes."

Leer a Kobo Abe es muy gratificante para mí. Tuve la suerte de saber de él en una revista literaria y me atrajo en forma inmediata. La reseña de su libro “Los cuentos siniestros”, que poseo, leí y disfruté con avidez, lo calificaba, por la técnica de su narrativa como el “Kafka japonés”. Era evidente que me iba atraer su literatura y así fue. No me defraudó. Recomiendo fuertemente este libro de cuentos, del que pueden leer mi reseña aquí en goodreads.
Adentrarse en sus historias, es en cierto modo, trazar muchas similitudes con el gigante checo con una excepción: en ningún momento Abe copia el estilo o se adueña de lo kafkiano para transformarlo en plagio. Luego de una fructífera lista de títulos, como “La mujer de arena”, “El hombre caja” o “El rostro ajeno”, impuso su forma de abordar el absurdo, lo existencial y la alienación de forma magistral, dándole al lector la posibilidad de establecer empatia con los personajes, puesto que siempre los dota siempre de determinadas debilidades.
En el caso de este libro me encuentro como dijera, con una historia de ribetes kafkianos en primer lugar ante la imposibilidad de “encuentro” del protagonista ante el objetivo que persigue: encontrar a su esposa. Debo reconocer que al principio, la historia me hizo recordar mucho a “El Castillo” de Kafka. En ese libro, K. se encuentra imposibilitado de acceder al castillo y mucho menos de poder reunirse con quien lo regentea (me viene a la cabeza el Sr. Klamm) mientras que en este el narrador busca a su esposa, quien subiera a una ambulancia que pasa a buscarla por su casa para ser internada desapareciendo dentro de un inmenso hospital realmente laberíntico, mezcla de shopping y feria de atracciones, lleno de personajes, empleados, doctores y pacientes totalmente surrealistas.
El narrador, quien primeramente aclara que contará sus vivencias en el hospital a través de cuadernos (así están separados los capítulos) y cassettes con grabaciones, lo hace en tercera persona, pero va intercambiando con la primera. Tiene conexión con personas que están al tanto de su asunto, sobre el que tiene que responder a las órdenes de un hombre muy extraño a quien apoda “el caballo”.
Otro punto escabroso (y que no tiene nada que ver con lo kafkiano) es la serie de diversos experimentos sexuales que se realizan en el hospital. Aquí es donde encontramos a un hombre totalmente desorientado por la naturaleza de los experimentos que ve, ya que de hecho se involucra con una niña, una secretaria, un jefe de guardia y otros personajes que están atentos, tras sus pasos. Es que en cierto modo, todo lo que sucede en el hospital es registrado por un sistema de vigilancia totalmente orwelliano. Cada una de esas personas está conectada con quienes lo siguen de cerca.
El entorno del hospital es totalmente laberíntico. Hay pasadizos, túneles, habitaciones, salas de espera, corredores, un cementerio, laboratorios e infinidad de sectores más que hacen que el narrador se desoriente por completo, lo que lo lleva a desesperarse y a preguntarse si es su esposa la que está perdida o si es él el que está alargando su ausencia para la preocupación de ella ante esta imprevista situación.
Un último detalle: muchos de los dispositivos, equipos y sistemas utilizados en el hospital tienen cierta afinidad con aquellos aparatos futuristas que tanto describe Ray Bradbury en libros como “Las Doradas Manzanas del Sol” o “El Hombre Ilustrado”.
Cada vez que el autor los describía, yo me remitía directamente a los descriptos por Bradbury en sus geniales cuentos.
Considero que es un libro entretenido, de lectura fácil y con una historia que posee más de un giro inesperado, que cuenta con la maestría de Kobo Abe para meternos dentro de este hospital infernal de modo que nos preguntemos lo mismo que el narrador: ¿encontrará a su esposa?

[Nate D · Rating 5 out of 5]

The back blurb describes this as satire. I sincerely hope that nothing in the Japanese medical system can actually be appropriately satirized in this form, because this book is horrifying. Secret Rendezvous is an unending psychosexual medical nightmare. It certainly possesses its absurdity, but it's that grinning death-mask absurdity that you don't want to meet on a dark night. The images, the deranged philosophizing, the very idea of getting trapped in such an endless hospitalized underworld. It's terrifying, bizarre, kind of amazing.

The premise is simple: an ambulance shows up at night and takes a man's wife, protesting her health, away, never to be seen again. Thus begins a vaguely proto-Murakamian noir, as the man begins to search the hospital (an irrational spatial marvel that seems bigger and more confusing each time it's described, which I love) for his missing loved one. But was she really taken against her will, or was she an accomplice in something larger? Something having to do, perhaps, with the horrible depersonalization and medicalization of sex oozing out through all the cracks in the sprawling building?

There's also an excellent formalist design here, the action taking place on two simultaneous planes as the narrator addresses the reader in a present advancing by steps, while recounting his story in a series of third person notebooks that eventually catch up to the action. The danger in such devices is that they can be distancing, but perhaps because of the third person switch, all those sections feel equally immediate. What I mean is that there's no outside narrative pressure drawing you out of the action, which is key because the bizarre landscape of the hospital is totally immersive and disorienting. You can get lost in it, even as its details are precisely, specifically conveyed.

The only other Abe I've read is the two-decades-earlier sci-fi-noir of Inter Ice Age 4, and this has a similar vague noir attachment and unpredictability, but was much further divorced from actual genre mechanics. Really, I'm probably triangulating The Women in the Dunes, which I should really get around to viewing/reading.

[Sawsan]

بداية الرواية تشد الانتباه وبالتدريج تتحول إلى حالة من العبث والتوهان بين شخصيات غريبة الأشكال والأطوار
عربة إسعاف لم يستدعها أحد تأخذ زوجة بطل الرواية التي لا تشكو من أي مرض للمستشفى
لتبدأ المتاهة التي يدور فيها الزوج للبحث عن زوجته واكتشاف ما يحدث داخل المستشفى
الرواية نُشرت عام 1977, فانتازيا أحداثها منفرة تدور في مستشفى للأبحاث والتجارب الجنسية
يعرض فيها كوبو آبي صورة متشائمة – أو واقعية- لضياع بطل الرواية وهو يحاول فعل ما يراه صحيحا
لم أتفق مع الجملة الأولى في مقدمة المترجم "هذا كتاب للدهشة
لكن الفكرة جيدة عن حقيقة شخصية الانسان المُحاصر في الواقع بين مراقبة الناس وبين رغباته وسلوكه

[Nathanimal · Rating 5 out of 5]

How could I not like this? Kafka check. Beckett check. Burroughs check. And that easy going Japanese narrator later associated with Murakami... check. Oh, and of course being himself check too.

I generally don't love books with huge libidos. All the masturbating and measuring of penises might've turned me off in another book. What can I say? I'm modest, maybe repressed, who knows? But this book seemed not to be so much about sex as the defamiliarization of sex in a modern bureaucratized, science-obsessed world. There are lots of hidden microphones, and polygraph machines, and squawking loud speakers: too many for sex to be enjoyable that's for sure. At one point the narrator goes running down the hall because he hears his young female charge (who has a bone gelatinizing disease) moaning in agony... but when he arrives of course it's not agony, it's... the other thing. He looks away. And I think: how strange our itches are. Why are agony and pleasure at their most extreme so close to the same thing? So many paradoxes. In this book about a hospital that is endless, everybody is a doctor, everybody is a patient. We're all a little bit messed up.

Yes there is a certain dissatisfaction that comes from being given everything you want in a novel (paradox). I should've read this about five years ago, back when I discovered The Kangaroo Notebook. Oh well that's not Abe's fault, but mine. Stars, stars, everybody gets as many stars as they want today.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The boundary between the hospital and the outside world isn't as firm as you think it is.

Kōbō Abe seems like he was probably an interesting person. I picture him sweaty and anxious, hunched over his typewriter in the throes of yet another paranoid fever dream. His perception is so sharp it causes deep pain. He hammers out figurative language that is both visceral and poetic:

An unpleasant, clammy sensation oozed from his pores, as though he were a sponge being trampled underfoot. His hopes cracked and peeled off like a thin layer of ice on a frozen orange.

This particular novel held me fixated with its shifting POV, unstable timeline, and creepy labyrinthine hospital setting. There is mystery, suspense, absurdity, surreal atmosphere, fetishistic sex practices, and biting commentary on the medical establishment (Abe makes particularly good use of his medical background here). The narrator's convoluted investigation into the disappearance of his wife gradually crumbles as he becomes more embroiled in the hazy intrigue saturating the hospital where his wife was last seen. The book grows increasingly weirder as the likelihood of any resolution shrinks further back into the dusty underground tunnels and the sky above grows 'black as an internal hemorrhage'.

This is one peculiar job I have taken on. No matter how I follow myself around, I will never see anything but my own backside, when what I want to know about lies beyond: the empty space, for example, that I never knew or dreamed existed until it was invaded by that doctor's footsteps ... the space that ever since has grown endlessly wider, separating my wife and me … the ground that anyone can walk around on freely, that belongs to nobody … the jealousy like a bed of hard, frozen lava, leaving only the imprint of anger ...

[Martina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non è un libro da leggere a scatola chiusa, bisogna essere consapevoli di quello a cui si va incontro.
Surreale a dei livelli inimmaginabili, rasenta il non sense, almeno in apparenza.
Necessaria la post fazione di questa edizione che spiega TUTTO.
Se vi cringiano le scene di sesso non leggetelo perché qua sono apposta molto grottesche e malate, meglio non essere pudici.
Un uomo a cui viene rapita la moglie da una strana ambulanza. Lui prova ad andare a recuperarla in questo misterioso ospedale, il tutto diventa una sorta di sogno lucido assurdo (per il lettore).
La clinica sembra essere in realtà specializzata sul sesso, si parla di "gare di orgasmi" e "trapianti di peni", che dire.
Senza post fazione gli avrei dato forse 2 stelle perché mi sembrava solo un libro malato e senza senso, in realtà è un'allegoria della nostra società, un distopico e anche mezzo filosofico titolo che usa il sesso come simbolo di una società dove mancano relazioni profonde, i rapporti, l'individuo conta sempre meno e vi è sempre più solitudine.
Va anche considerato l'anno in cui è stato scritto (1977) e dove è stato scritto.

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was like a demented mix of Clive Barker and Franz Kafka. As a satire, this didn't really work for me, but as I warped horror tale this was a twisted blast. 4/5

[Rhockman · Rating 1 out of 5]

No sé si era un tema de traducción o qué pero no entendí un carajo lo que estaba leyendo. Cada oración fue un desafío que no mereció el esfuerzo en lo absoluto.
Un tipo dando vueltas en una especie de hospital surrealista donde todo gira alrededor del tamaño de los pitos de los hombres, pero aburrido, y eso que me encantan los pitos.

[Ian Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

So... what did I miss?

I think I missed something?

I believe that I was able to grasp a few of the targets of this work, first and foremost the medical industry, but still, do you have to hate hospitals to really catch this, or was there something specific that Abe was poking at?

I won't attempt to pretend that I am judging this from above, and I have even listened to a few reviews (all positive) after finishing this book, but I'll finish this review from below.

I put this book down for low periods often.

Sometimes because it was disgusting.

I am not immediately unable to read about subjects like child molestation, for example, however, I do have a difficult time with a book that won't allow me to judge the molesters, or at least some of them, because I can't exactly figure out if our main character is a child molester or not.

But, put that aside.

The non pedophilic sexuality of this book is also often quite disgusting. Maybe that's the point. But, to what end? Again, I'm sure it is something, but I couldn't grasp what it was, and this book wasn't valuable enough to me to make much of a study of it.

Yet, despite my ignorance, there is one point that I feel a bit more able to speak about.

This book is a mystery and a terrible mystery.

Is it a terrible mystery because it lacks answers? Nope. It is a terrible mystery because I knew very early on that there would never be an answer, and because the search never left me feeling like I was turning the pages looking for answers.

Again, I'm sure that if I was ever given a chance to chat with someone with a better grasp on what Abe was doing here, I would enjoy that conversation. I'm sure would think it over and think, yep, that is a really amazing idea. But... here as I sit and type... I don't get it.

[João Reis · Rating 2 out of 5]

The second book by Kobo Abe I've read. And I can assure you that it was the last. Never again, please.

[Matteo Fumagalli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Videorecensione: https://youtu.be/ykDbIXU7Lqk

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

At a little after four o’clock one morning an ambulance, lights and siren going, arrives at the narrator’s home to take his wife away. She’s in perfect health and doesn’t need one; but they carry her out on a stretcher anyway and, stupidly, the man doesn’t go with her. As the hours pass and the phone doesn’t ring it slowly dawns on him that, in effect, she’s been carried off only half-dressed by two masked strangers, and now seems to have completely disappeared. Having eventually tracked down the correct hospital, he finds no trace of her there—in fact they deny she was ever admitted.
    Then it all starts to get strange. The “hospital” (if it actually is one) is partly derelict and partly underground, is being run by a man who is experimenting on himself and, within days, the narrator has not only become its head of security, but is handed three reels of audiotape to analyse. What’s on them is a series of wire-tapped phone calls and bugged conversations…of himself. Attempting (or apparently attempting) to find his vanished wife, he’s instead being told to investigate himself: the clues to his wife’s disappearance may lie in his own behaviour. All this leaves the reader (or left this reader anyway) wondering: did she really “disappear” like this, or was it an ingenious way of getting rid of her? Or did the lady herself set the whole thing up? Does the narrator even have a wife at all? Is he nuts?
    Kōbō Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes (1964) is wonderfully odd, The Box Man (1973) a fiendishly intricate and deeply peculiar masterpiece—and I was hoping for something similar here. And maybe that is what it is. Secret Rendezvous (1977) probably is an even more extreme example of the same kind of thing—its narrator not so much “unreliable” as creepily mad, and much of what he’s telling us a mix of half-truths, fantasies and outright lies. The sort of thing I like working out usually, and yet… Maybe it was the sex (what was shocking four decades ago, in Japan, no longer so) or an author trying too hard to live up to his reputation (in his day he was that country’s most successful novelist). The opening was promising enough; but for me, even after a reread, the rest dragged badly.

[Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting mix of dark and absurd. After reading it, I started enjoying more of its dream-like world, but while reading, it wasn't a very enjoyable experience. The style of narration forces us to try our best to reconstruct what really happened, but at the same time the absurdity level keeps going up. It does have the quality of being "shocking" and it might have worked better 40 years ago, but contemporary readers won't be too impressed by craziness or weird sex... and there wasn't much more.

[غَـيـن · Rating 2 out of 5]

أول قراءة لي لكاتب ياباني .. صراحة لا أعرف ما هو سبب عدم استيعابي للروية أكان أسلوب الترجمة و السرد أم أن النوع من هذه الروايات لا يروقني لأني لم أقرأ رواية بمثل هذا الأسلوب .. لا أحداث تذكر مجرد تسلسل لحدث واحد ونهاية مبهمة .. تأتي سيارة إسعاف بدون موعد مسبق وتأخذ زوجته وتختفي الزوجة في ظروف غامضة تدفع الزوج للبحث عن زوجته . يدخلنا الكاتب في متاهات داخل المستشفى وأشياء وتجارب غريبة يقوم بها العاملين هناك .. كانت البداية مربكة نوعاً ما ولكن النهاية أشد إرباكاً . أسلوب يعتمد على الغموض والألغاز ولاحظت وصف كثير للأماكن يجعلها أكثر تعقيداً .. لا أعلم ان كان هذا الأسلوب مستساغ و معتاد عليه في الكتابة في اليابان ولكنه أسلوب معقد جداً على الفهم بالنسبة لذائقتي الشخصية في الأدب .

[ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

i’ll probably forget about this in 20 minutes but it was a good read overall

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

c.f. The Castle, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Standing on a lawn swollen like green gelatin as it sucked light from the overhead street lamps was an apartment building made of glass and ivory-colored tiles, like a work of abstract art. Each floor had a deep veranda, so that the building became progressively narrower toward the top, like a small pyramid. Abandoning the van in an outdoor parking lot, they ran to the entrance, where an automatic door made of glass a centimeter thick slid noiselessly open, revealing a light-blue-gray wall-to-wall carpet so thick they padded across it like cats. [104–5]

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did Not enjoy this book.
the beginning was decent, almost Kafka-esque, the way that the protagonist was plunged into a strange and unforgiving world of the hospital.. but the author’s fixation on unnecessary detail which never proves to be significant eg specific layout of the hospital floor, makes it a bit of a nuisance to get through

It became so overtly sexual, which I’m not always against but I just couldn’t find any deeper meaning or purpose to it, especially a part with a thirteen year old girl who is being suggestive and appears naked to the protagonist.. it almost seemed like a kind of strange sexual fantasy at some points, detailing strange sexual experiments

just don’t waste your time with it …

[Samuel Gordon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, this one aged like milk. I almost didn't finish it but I did, hence the one-star rating.

[Abdullah Bakhashwain · Rating 2 out of 5]

اللقاء الاول لي مع الروائي الياباني كوبو آبي في هذه الرواية الواقعة في ٢٨٩ىصفحة من الحجم المتوسط وهي من منشورات المؤسسة الغربية للدراسات وترجمة كامل يوسف حسين. اعطيتها نجمتين . هناك عاملان افسدا متعة قراءة الرواية الاول سوء الترجمة ولا اعرف هل الترجمة عن اليابانية او لغة اخرى ، الترجمة كانت سيئة جداً و ايضاً علامات التنصيص والعامل الاخر هو سوء الطباعة الكلمات ناقصة .
فكرة الرواية تحري افتقد زوجته التي اختطفت من المنزل بسيارة اسعاف ومن عنا تبدأ الرواية بالبحث عن الزوجة و طبعاً في المستشفى ولكن التحري يكشف الفساد والانحطاط والاستغلال في المستشفى وكيف تروج تجارة الاعضاء … وتبادل الادوار وتنتهي الرواية دون ان يجد زوجته. تداخلت الفنتازيا والخيال العلمي و الواقعية لولا سوء الترجمة ربما تقدم الرواية بشكل افضل وساعود مرة ثانية للتعليق

[Tarafa Shuraiki · Rating 2 out of 5]

بداية وبعيداً عن رأيي الخاص بالرواية فإنني لا أنصح بقراءة الطبعة التي بين يدي، إذ أنها طبعت بأحرف صغيرة الحجم ليكون عدد الصفحات 180 لذلك أنصح بقراءة نسخة المؤسسة العربية للدراسات والنشر حيث يبلغ عدد الصفحات 290 وبالتالي ستكون القراءة أكثر راحة.
يقول المترجم في مقدمة الرواية أن "هذا كتاب للدهشة" وأعتقد أن الأمر مبالغ فيه، الكتاب غريب ينقل القارئ إلى عالم سوريالي، ولاشك أن القارئ سينجذب للرواية في بعض مراحلها، لكني لا أحبذ هذه العوالم الغريبة. وأياً كانت الفكرة الأساسية للنص فإنها لم تصلني، قد يتعلق الأمر بقدرتي على فك رموز الرواية؟؟؟ ربما!!!
بكل الأحوال لم تعجبني بيئة وموضوع الرواية.
أجد نفسي تقليدياً في مقاربة الأدب.. قد يكون هو السبب، ربما!!!

[KnNaRfF · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story sounds straightforward enough - missing wife, husband following clues to find her. However being a Kobo Abe book it was never going to be that simple. The narrative swaps from 1st to 3rd person and back again, everyone is holding something back and the story keeps jumping forward and back. Most of the characters are extremely odd, complex and interesting. The story is very gripping and weird.

[Nykan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel disturbed

[Geoffrey Waring · Rating 4 out of 5]

As bizarre a book as I can imagine, but somewhere in the middle I started to find it gripping. When they call stories dreamlike, people are usually referring to bizarre imagery or an ethereal atmosphere; Secret Rendezvous is dreamlike in a more literal sense, as it requires you to surrender logic to its own universe of signs and impressions. This can be hard to do. In the end, rather than a satire of the medical system (which is what the book's cover advertised), it seems to rather be a nightmare of sex and loneliness, using a labyrinthine hospital as a representation of a deteriorating mind and the form of a scientific report as a substitute for alienated consciousness. This is more of a feeling than anything, though -- to me, this book both invites and defies interpretation in sort of a tantalizing way. Certainly disturbing and not for everyone, I was still impressed with what this story was able to make me feel, if not fully understand, and despite my initial skepticism.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Secret Rendezvous [1977/79] – ★★★

I previously enjoyed both Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes [1962] and The Face of Another [1964], and I thought Secret Rendezvous was the weakest of the three. The premise here is still delightfully surrealist, absurd and intriguing: a husband wakes up to find his wife missing - she was unnecessarily taken as a patient from her home to a hospital. The husband starts to search for his missing wife and finds the world growing stranger as his search deepens. Secret Rendezvous is an extension of Kafkaesque nightmare filled with strange erotic instances and human experimentations (not to mention a person there who thinks he is a horse!). The problem with Secret Rendezvous is that the readers of today are no longer as perplexed and fascinated by mass video surveillance and even strange erotic practices as they undoubtedly were when Abe first wrote his book.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

It warrants all of the "Kafka-esque" descriptions it gets. Unlike Kafka's characters, who never grasp the machinations of their world, the nameless main character of this book, at times, gets hip to the absurdity. As he does, however, he becomes deeper entrenched in the labyrinth sex research hospital, until his initial goals of finding his wife and returning home to normalcy become completely lost. The ending is still confusing me. It's lucidly rendered and absolutely disturbing.

[Bridie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars...
What in the what did I just read?
I am confused, did I like this book? I don't think I'll ever know. (Which I think is a yes)
Yes, it was gripping, weird, odd, and wild.
The no-names of characters was hella confusing as was the changing from 1st to 3rd person, I didn't know if I was coming or going.
I'd absolutely recommend it to a friend, simply to untangle this crazy story together.
What a ride.

[Shawn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not make heads or tails of this bizarre, perverse nonsense. Normally I am able to trust Abe more and deal with working through his symbolism, but this feels like he took a dream he had and expanded upon it. There's plenty of shocking imagery, straight up goofiness and a stab in the dark about the nature of sex and arousal and none of it worked for me.

[Ben Samson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here the madcap perversity of Burroughs, the helter-skelter frenzy and arch dialogue of Pynchon and the paranoia and bureaucratic nightmare worlds of Kafka all collide but with a protagonist who’s horrified and bemused by it all which makes for quite a bit of fun. Formally really interesting too with the first person happening in the present tense and the third person section constantly running to catch up. Such clever, noir like structure. The idea of being trapped in this geographically uncertain hospital netherworld which is riddled with secret passages and tunnels and Abe’s horrifyingly austere medicalisation of sex combine two very specific neuroses of mine in a way that was wildly effective and repellent.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is often compared with The Trial by Kafka, and like that book, I'd say that this one is strange, messy, and brilliant, weaving a tapestry of complex and sometimes perplexing themes around a simple enough premise - a man navigating a labyrinthine hospital in search of his wife who was taken there by two EMTs in the middle of the night. There's a noir vibe to the investigative aspect, and the book definitely shares some DNA with Cronenberg's Videodrome with its body horror element and prescient outlook on how media is affecting society, especially sexually and in interpersonal relationships.

The novel has an interesting switchback structure with the story up to a certain point being revealed through the protagonist's analysis of voyeur-y audio surveillance of himself in a series of notebooks for the hospital's assistant director and head of the Cartilage Surgery Department, the Horse. (I won't say how because it's one of the best body horror parts of the story, but the horse has another person's lower half grafted onto his body to get a spare penis to cure his impotence, and if that sounds crazy to you, it's only the tip of the iceberg.) The horse serves as the figure of the Minotaur in the labyrinth, which is disorienting and difficult to even visualize at times - the translator described Abe's descriptions of the hospital as being characterized by a sort of "spatial schizophrenia," and that same disorientation bleeds somewhat into the overall feel of the book, too. It's a dense book - a lot happens in less than 200 pages, and there were some compelling things that I wish were parsed out a little more, especially with relation to the horse's character and motivations. But overall, I love haphazard, imaginative, scary fever dreams like this, and with this one Abe is every bit the mad scientist giving us a creepy chimera of a novel.

Also read if you want a protagonist in jump shoes that allow him to leap high and assassins in sweat pants that do times tables.

[Juan Araizaga · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 días y 221 páginas después. Probablemente el libro más raro y extravagante que voy a leer en todo el año, y sí apenas es la primer semana de enero. Pero más de la mitad del libro me la pasé pensando, ¿Qué carajo estoy y por qué le hice caso a un tik tok para leer un libro? Debí investigar primero, pero que tipo de lector aburrido sería si no me arriesgo regularmente.

Me gusta (y solo por eso las tres estrellas) la forma individualista que muestra del hombre, de la forma tan vaga en la que se intenta pertenecer a una sociedad... Ya en los 60 bastante jodida. Y nada, de una manera solitaria (no estoy seguro de explicarme) el texto hubiera funcionado... Pero intentar hacer que esto funcione de una manera lineal, rompe con su misticisimo.

No estoy seguro que vuelva a leer al autor... A menos que alguien me recomiende algo de él. No habrá reseña.