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The Facades
Along the streets of the once-great Midwestern city of Trude, the ornate old buildings lie in ruin. Shrouded in disappointment and nostalgia, Trude has become a place to “lose yourself,” as one tourist brochure puts it: a treacherous maze of convoluted shopping malls, barricaded libraries, and elitist assisted-living homes.
One night at Trude’s opera house, the theater’s most celebrated mezzo-soprano vanishes during rehearsal. When police come up empty-handed, the star’s husband, a disconsolate legal clerk named Sven Norberg, must take up the quest on his own. But to discover the secret of his wife’s disappearance, Norberg must descend into Trude’s underworld and confront the menacing and bizarre citizens of his hometown: rebellious librarians, shifty music critics, a cop called the Oracle, and the minister of an apocalyptic church who has recruited Norberg’s teenage son. Faced with the loss of everything he loves, Norberg follows his investigation to the heart of the city and through the buildings of a possibly insane modernist architect called Bernhard, whose elaborate vision will offer him an astonishing revelation.
One night at Trude’s opera house, the theater’s most celebrated mezzo-soprano vanishes during rehearsal. When police come up empty-handed, the star’s husband, a disconsolate legal clerk named Sven Norberg, must take up the quest on his own. But to discover the secret of his wife’s disappearance, Norberg must descend into Trude’s underworld and confront the menacing and bizarre citizens of his hometown: rebellious librarians, shifty music critics, a cop called the Oracle, and the minister of an apocalyptic church who has recruited Norberg’s teenage son. Faced with the loss of everything he loves, Norberg follows his investigation to the heart of the city and through the buildings of a possibly insane modernist architect called Bernhard, whose elaborate vision will offer him an astonishing revelation.
218 pages, Hardcover
First published September 12, 2013
15 people are currently reading
940 people want to read
About the author
Eric Lundgren
6 books40 followersEric Lundgren received his MFA from the Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis. His writing has appeared in Tin House, Boulevard, Post Road, and Quarterly West. His first novel, The Facades, was named a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and a Best Book of 2013 by Publishers Weekly and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He lives in Minneapolis.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 126 reviews
November 3, 2013
I like to think I'm an intelligent person, but I think I'm not smart enough to understand this book. Yes, I understand that our narrator, Sven, is unreliable in the sense that he remembers all of the good things about his missing wife Molly and none of the bad. He doesn't seem to realize that she was unhappy and that he was apparently pushing her away, even when other characters almost come right out and say it. And I suppose the whole point of the book is reminding people the dangers of becoming too wrapped in one thing to the exclusion of everything else, so that you don't miss important things like the fact that your only child is slowly pulling away from you to join what I'm pretty sure was a cult.
But really, a lot of the aspects of this book felt as though they were only there to highlight its own cleverness. At first, I enjoyed the quirkiness of the town. (Although I-99 is a real interstate that exists in Pennsylvania and this clearly was not set there, so every time he mentioned I-99 I thought of my hometown, which is located off that road.) I liked the idea of such an oddly constructed mall, and the idea of librarians holing up in the last remaining branch of the public library system. Eventually, though, these little tidbits just kept piling up, completely separate from what seemed to be the main story and adding nothing except amusing anecdotes.
There were also a lot of things introduced that never get resolved. Maybe they were never meant to be, but what was the point of bored policemen inventing fake evidence for cases? What purpose was there for people trying to convince Sven that the charming British man at the opera at the end was the town's theater reviewer, when everyone knew that wasn't the case? Was the entire town involved in Molly's disappearance, as at times seemed to be the case, or was everyone else just as clueless as Sven?
I started the book not knowing what was about, and I finished it the same way. For the first half, I was completely engrossed in the mystery, in the town's oddities, but by the end of it, I just wanted it to be over.
But really, a lot of the aspects of this book felt as though they were only there to highlight its own cleverness. At first, I enjoyed the quirkiness of the town. (Although I-99 is a real interstate that exists in Pennsylvania and this clearly was not set there, so every time he mentioned I-99 I thought of my hometown, which is located off that road.) I liked the idea of such an oddly constructed mall, and the idea of librarians holing up in the last remaining branch of the public library system. Eventually, though, these little tidbits just kept piling up, completely separate from what seemed to be the main story and adding nothing except amusing anecdotes.
There were also a lot of things introduced that never get resolved. Maybe they were never meant to be, but what was the point of bored policemen inventing fake evidence for cases? What purpose was there for people trying to convince Sven that the charming British man at the opera at the end was the town's theater reviewer, when everyone knew that wasn't the case? Was the entire town involved in Molly's disappearance, as at times seemed to be the case, or was everyone else just as clueless as Sven?
I started the book not knowing what was about, and I finished it the same way. For the first half, I was completely engrossed in the mystery, in the town's oddities, but by the end of it, I just wanted it to be over.
November 9, 2013
A very hard book to pinpoint or place into any known genre. There is a city called Trude, once known as the Munich of the Midwest, now known as a good place to commit suicide. A city that has decaying mansions, broken down buildings and an authoritarian mayor bent on destroying the towns library. Its beleaguered starring man is Sven, whose wife Molly has disappeared. He wants only to find her and finds clues everywhere but inside himself.
In a little over two hundred pages this book includes a assisted living center called Traumhaus, where one must apply to be admitted. Where scrabble games are a spectator sport and where a group of residents called "The Pinkies", yes they wear pink bathrobes and slippers, are the envy of the other residents.
There are gun toting librarians in ski masks manning a reference desk that most are afraid to approach.They are called the Trude 13, they sleep in the library, and refuse to leave because the mayor wants to blow up the building. It is important to note that the author works at a public library in St. Louis. Of course everyone thinks the mayor is upset with the library because he returned a waterlogged romance book (of course it was that way when he checked it out) and had to pay for the book.
Sven and his son are left to themselves, a job Sven is not up to. Of course there is a church ready to step in. What would a decrepit town be without a church preparing themselves for the second coming. Anyway there is so much more and I have to admit I really enjoyed reading this. For a first novel it is very good. The meaning, well that I think will change for each person that reads this. There are many different ways to go. Of course there is always the possibility that one many not find any meaning, but they will have a great time getting there.
In a little over two hundred pages this book includes a assisted living center called Traumhaus, where one must apply to be admitted. Where scrabble games are a spectator sport and where a group of residents called "The Pinkies", yes they wear pink bathrobes and slippers, are the envy of the other residents.
There are gun toting librarians in ski masks manning a reference desk that most are afraid to approach.They are called the Trude 13, they sleep in the library, and refuse to leave because the mayor wants to blow up the building. It is important to note that the author works at a public library in St. Louis. Of course everyone thinks the mayor is upset with the library because he returned a waterlogged romance book (of course it was that way when he checked it out) and had to pay for the book.
Sven and his son are left to themselves, a job Sven is not up to. Of course there is a church ready to step in. What would a decrepit town be without a church preparing themselves for the second coming. Anyway there is so much more and I have to admit I really enjoyed reading this. For a first novel it is very good. The meaning, well that I think will change for each person that reads this. There are many different ways to go. Of course there is always the possibility that one many not find any meaning, but they will have a great time getting there.
August 13, 2016
I think 2.5 is more accurate for me. It’s definitely got some really clever elements, but they feel wasted on a weak, throwaway story.
There’s a moment in the book when the protagonist, Sven, is reading the memoir of the city of Trude’s most influential architect, the crazy but brilliant Klaus Bernhard. Bernhard calls his lost love, Ulli, “’the missing heart’ of his architecture.” As irony would have it, The Facades seems to suffer a similar loss.
In a book as stylish and hipsterific as this one, I can’t say I'm surprised that it's “missing heart.” Whenever a book has an obvious preoccupation, like aesthetics, other elements of storytelling seem to fall to the wayside. Ultimately, I wish the main characters and the plot did the setting justice. Sven (yes, we’re getting the inner thoughts of a person actually named Sven, living in ’Murrica) is a stereotypical suburban wet blanket, and his son Kyle is aloof and friendless. Sven is a self described paranoiac who goes out each night to search for his missing wife, Molly. Kyle, with little fanfare, becomes devoutly religious and subsequently is a mere ghostly presence in most of the book. Neither character is markedly intriguing. Molly seems like she has more of a story to tell, but it's Sven' s voice we get, a dry, mechanical kind of narration that lacks intimacy and emotional grit.
Trude is the real character in The Facades. Eric Lundgren seems to hit his stride when describing the city's history and the perpetually disgruntled architect who contributed to its infamous design. Take for instance Trude’s mall: Built as a spiral with a seemingly unsolvable, mysterious labyrinth of tall hedges at its center...
“The mall had become Trude’s most popular tourist attraction, despite its impracticality for actual shopping: people flew in from all over the world simply to walk through it, departing the city without even setting foot downtown. Maybe the ultimate emptiness at the heart of capitalism was the architect’s didactic joke. They sold a souvenir T-shirt at a stand outside the labyrinth, screen-printed with Bernhard’s spiral blueprint and the slogan TRUDE WE TRIED.”
The mall really captured my imagination. As did the highly selective retirement home, Traumhaus, whose inhabitants earn their keep by writing their memoir—the more disturbing the better—and submitting chapters for review. So the passages exploring Trude and its oddities were glimmering moments of creativity that sort of convinced me of Lundgren' s potential as a literary fiction writer. I would read another book set in Trude, if he chooses to build upon this small universe he's created, in the hopes that a second installment revolving around all new characters might improve upon the narrative stumblings of the first.
Now maybe this was glaringly obvious from the book description, but I hadn't expected the postmodern undercurrent, i.e. how can we know what we know to be true?, nothing is certain, there are no absolute truths, etc. But it's there –I kept getting flashbacks to the numerous reincarnations of the post horn symbol and the maddeningly quest of The Crying of Lot 49 and that department in 1984 where history is literally rewritten. I suppose it's out of fashion to drop the word "postmodern" in jacket copy, but Lundgren seems to want to play with this, the instability of things we assume to be immutable. I just don't think he pushes it far enough. There's a lack of commitment to the ideas that renders them soggy and too last-minute. I realize I'm not giving much context to how this dapples with the postmodern. Without spoiling anything, it's difficult to frame, other than this: Sven the paranoid is driven to find answers, only will he?
Sometimes inventive, other times a bore, The Facades is a strange little book. I’d recommend to some, certainly not to all.
There’s a moment in the book when the protagonist, Sven, is reading the memoir of the city of Trude’s most influential architect, the crazy but brilliant Klaus Bernhard. Bernhard calls his lost love, Ulli, “’the missing heart’ of his architecture.” As irony would have it, The Facades seems to suffer a similar loss.
In a book as stylish and hipsterific as this one, I can’t say I'm surprised that it's “missing heart.” Whenever a book has an obvious preoccupation, like aesthetics, other elements of storytelling seem to fall to the wayside. Ultimately, I wish the main characters and the plot did the setting justice. Sven (yes, we’re getting the inner thoughts of a person actually named Sven, living in ’Murrica) is a stereotypical suburban wet blanket, and his son Kyle is aloof and friendless. Sven is a self described paranoiac who goes out each night to search for his missing wife, Molly. Kyle, with little fanfare, becomes devoutly religious and subsequently is a mere ghostly presence in most of the book. Neither character is markedly intriguing. Molly seems like she has more of a story to tell, but it's Sven' s voice we get, a dry, mechanical kind of narration that lacks intimacy and emotional grit.
Trude is the real character in The Facades. Eric Lundgren seems to hit his stride when describing the city's history and the perpetually disgruntled architect who contributed to its infamous design. Take for instance Trude’s mall: Built as a spiral with a seemingly unsolvable, mysterious labyrinth of tall hedges at its center...
“The mall had become Trude’s most popular tourist attraction, despite its impracticality for actual shopping: people flew in from all over the world simply to walk through it, departing the city without even setting foot downtown. Maybe the ultimate emptiness at the heart of capitalism was the architect’s didactic joke. They sold a souvenir T-shirt at a stand outside the labyrinth, screen-printed with Bernhard’s spiral blueprint and the slogan TRUDE WE TRIED.”
The mall really captured my imagination. As did the highly selective retirement home, Traumhaus, whose inhabitants earn their keep by writing their memoir—the more disturbing the better—and submitting chapters for review. So the passages exploring Trude and its oddities were glimmering moments of creativity that sort of convinced me of Lundgren' s potential as a literary fiction writer. I would read another book set in Trude, if he chooses to build upon this small universe he's created, in the hopes that a second installment revolving around all new characters might improve upon the narrative stumblings of the first.
Now maybe this was glaringly obvious from the book description, but I hadn't expected the postmodern undercurrent, i.e. how can we know what we know to be true?, nothing is certain, there are no absolute truths, etc. But it's there –I kept getting flashbacks to the numerous reincarnations of the post horn symbol and the maddeningly quest of The Crying of Lot 49 and that department in 1984 where history is literally rewritten. I suppose it's out of fashion to drop the word "postmodern" in jacket copy, but Lundgren seems to want to play with this, the instability of things we assume to be immutable. I just don't think he pushes it far enough. There's a lack of commitment to the ideas that renders them soggy and too last-minute. I realize I'm not giving much context to how this dapples with the postmodern. Without spoiling anything, it's difficult to frame, other than this: Sven the paranoid is driven to find answers, only will he?
Sometimes inventive, other times a bore, The Facades is a strange little book. I’d recommend to some, certainly not to all.
October 12, 2013
The Facades is an unapologetically literary novel, teeming with sly allusions to other books, mostly of the experimental and postmodern variety. If this description makes it sound irritating, too clever by half, I have failed to describe it adequately. Let me try again: The Facades is cerebral but not heartless; surreal, not unreal. It has the familiar strangeness of a recurring dream. You know you’re home, but the streets are all askew. The first-person narrator, a depressed and defiantly dull man, is a cipher: His city, Trude, in all its elegant decrepitude, is the real protagonist. Trude (its name is an homage to Calvino’s Invisible Cities) is a mash-up of various moribund Midwestern cities, but because I live in St. Louis, which also happens to be the author’s current home, I couldn’t help but be struck by its many similarities to my heartbreaker of a hometown. The satire is never mean-spirited, in the way of, say, Franzen, and it’s clear that Lundgren loves this locus of losers. The inhabitants of Trude have a certain pluck, if not heroism: They flock to the opera hall and idolize the local mezzo-soprano (the main character’s wife, whose disappearance kickstarts the plot). The militant public librarians, who take up arms to defend their institution against the assaults of the boorish, bottom line–worshipping mayor, have a doomed nobility. The town’s official suicide bridge is covered with small commemorative plaques, one for each life taken, as stipulated in the town charter. My favorite character, who is already dead by the time the story begins, is a crazy architect who designed, among other beloved landmarks, a labyrinthine shopping mall and an asylum for memoirists. His name, by the way, is Bernhard (as in Thomas, as in The Loser). This is a slender but very dense novel that I’m sure will yield new pleasures on future readings. It is also very funny and surprisingly moving. I loved it.
September 21, 2013
Ugh. I guess I am too stupid for this book. Halfway through, I went to my local library and picked up Calvino's "Invisible Cities" to see if it would help. Nope. While the sentences were riveting at times, with many interesting words and turns of phrases, after a while I just got the feeling that the author was laughing at silly, stupid me. I don't like opera. I don't like architecture. And I don't like stories that go absolutely nowhere. I hoped it would get better. Then I hoped it would end, even as I dreaded picking it up again. Characters go nowhere. The plot is ... not necessarily pointless, but in the end I didn't care at all. I get that people should work on building themselves, making the place they inhabit an extension of who they are, and who they aspire to be. This debut took me there kicking and screaming ...
September 21, 2013
4.5 out of 5. I can't exactly say why I'm not giving this a full 5. Perhaps it's the way it was a bit slow to start or the few moments here or there that felt unnecessary or superfluous. Although, I almost wonder if this book will grow in my estimation some years down the line - re-reading it to discover new facets, uncover new tricks of language, and so on. New light shed upon things I previously thought to be just... there. Who is to say? Readers should understand (and be warned) that the slightly wacky sound of the official synopsis is more muted in the book - but that the true depth is in the distinct imagination of the author and of his creation here. This is a puzzle to be solved - but you can't be upset if there turns out to be no solution.
Full review at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-OB
(***This review originally appeared here, at The Next Best Book Blog - give them some love!***)
Full review at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-OB
(***This review originally appeared here, at The Next Best Book Blog - give them some love!***)
December 27, 2014
I read this book in a day (a long day, but a day no less). I'm a sucker for unreliable narrators, the mildly surreal, and vigilante librarians. Frankly, the book had me at vigilante librarians. It's a strange book and not one to come to if you're looking for a tidy narrative that easily resolves itself. Ostensibly about a man living through the months after his wife vanishes, it quickly emerges that this is hardly a mystery novel. Instead, this is a book to read for the pleasure of language, a strange mid-western city full of the highly (perhaps overly) literate citizens, a missing woman, and militarized libraries.
Like I said, strange but fun. If you approach it with an open mind, I think you'll enjoy it.
Like I said, strange but fun. If you approach it with an open mind, I think you'll enjoy it.
August 7, 2013
All along I felt that I had missed something. Some piece of history or crucial description of a character. In the last chapter I realized that I knew all I needed to know, and it was ok to wonder about the rest. Absolutely perfect ending. Will definitely revisit this book in the future.
October 24, 2013
The world is everything that is the case.
Unless, that is, you’re stuck spending time in Trude, the fictional city at the heart of debut author Eric Lundgren’s novel The Facades. Once considered the “Munich of the Midwest” in the late 1890s, the place “still looks beautiful on a map,” but the next century would prove to be most barbarous to its one beautiful feats of architectural wonder.
It’s here, within the elusive borders of this crumbling city where A doesn’t always equal A, that Sven Norberg walks the streets night after night, his “pockets jammed with evidence bags,” hoping to stumble upon some clue that will unlock the mystery behind his famous wife’s recent disappearance.
The local police, who rely more on the prescient fragments of dream knowledge provided to them by an officer known only as “The Oracle” than they do on actual detective work, have hit a brick wall in their investigation. The shotgun toting, librarians turned terrorists, who are protesting a complete shutdown of their beloved institutions due to a lack of funding, are of little to no help. The local arts and entertainment editor, one of the last people to see Sven’s opera singing wife Molly Norberg alive, only communicates potentially useful information by way of cryptic acrostics.
In other words, solving this particular mystery won’t be an easy undertaking.
READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/facad...
Unless, that is, you’re stuck spending time in Trude, the fictional city at the heart of debut author Eric Lundgren’s novel The Facades. Once considered the “Munich of the Midwest” in the late 1890s, the place “still looks beautiful on a map,” but the next century would prove to be most barbarous to its one beautiful feats of architectural wonder.
Grand hotels, windowed with cardboard, still advertised ten-dollar rooms on their outer walls. Decrepit mansions hung on the boulevards, spattered with graffiti. Money, with its gaseous tendencies to rise and escape, drifted to the suburbs of Sherwood Forest and New Arcadia.
It’s here, within the elusive borders of this crumbling city where A doesn’t always equal A, that Sven Norberg walks the streets night after night, his “pockets jammed with evidence bags,” hoping to stumble upon some clue that will unlock the mystery behind his famous wife’s recent disappearance.
The local police, who rely more on the prescient fragments of dream knowledge provided to them by an officer known only as “The Oracle” than they do on actual detective work, have hit a brick wall in their investigation. The shotgun toting, librarians turned terrorists, who are protesting a complete shutdown of their beloved institutions due to a lack of funding, are of little to no help. The local arts and entertainment editor, one of the last people to see Sven’s opera singing wife Molly Norberg alive, only communicates potentially useful information by way of cryptic acrostics.
In other words, solving this particular mystery won’t be an easy undertaking.
READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/facad...
June 28, 2023
I believe the best kind of absurdity is the kind that we are complacent in the creation and continuation of. Big words aside, I think that is the way I would describe the Midwest to a total outsider. As an Eastern PA native the area I live in unfortunately shares a lot of similarities culturally to the Midwest. (it's 'pop' not 'soda' fight me) Midwestern America is hard to describe, sorta listless and plagued with a lot of new development flushed with agricultural money-- plus an amazing genre of emo named after it. Ya can't get anywhere without a car and you feel like some of those long-held cultural institutions are eroding around you on I-70.
um. so this book captures that well I think. Lundgren's Frankenstein city of Trude is decaying, and filled with enough quirky shit to appease Vonnegut. The writing style, especially is reminiscent of Snicket, with word puzzles, a unclear mystery, strange and unexplained groups of people, and some senile architect that could be dead or alive. I certainly didn't enjoy a lot of this book but it really just kept my pages turning because of how befuddled I became. I will say that this book is for a very specific type of person which may or not be me.
I became intertwined in Sven and Molly Norberg's story, for better or for worse.
um. so this book captures that well I think. Lundgren's Frankenstein city of Trude is decaying, and filled with enough quirky shit to appease Vonnegut. The writing style, especially is reminiscent of Snicket, with word puzzles, a unclear mystery, strange and unexplained groups of people, and some senile architect that could be dead or alive. I certainly didn't enjoy a lot of this book but it really just kept my pages turning because of how befuddled I became. I will say that this book is for a very specific type of person which may or not be me.
I became intertwined in Sven and Molly Norberg's story, for better or for worse.
September 17, 2013
And here's my review: http://www.startribune.com/entertainm...
August 31, 2013
Lundgren’s debut The Facades follows Sven Norberg through the Midwestern town of Trude, hunting for his missing wife. One night, Molly, Trude’s celebrated mezzo-soprano, disappears after rehearsal one night with no hints as to what happened. Convinced that something sinister was at work, Sven becomes obsessed tracking down his wife. His hunt takes him through many of Trude’s unique buildings and interacting with some very odd characters. There is his son who is drifting away after the disappearance of Molly, a group of rebellious librarians whose leader lusted after Molly, a sunglasses wearing cop known as The Oracle, a music critic that speaks of Molly in acrostics in his articles, and of course the odd architecture of the city. In fact, as the novel progresses, Sven seems to only find peace communing with the mall, the central library, the opera house, and the assisted living home, all constructed by the eccentric architect, Bernhard.
While it may seem like and oddly constructed who-done-it, The Facades is more an existential stroll through a surreal land. Stylistically, Lundgren’s writing is simply compelling. With sentences laden with bizarre and delightful metaphors he works up the reader’s inquisitiveness in both the mystery of Molly and the oddities that makes up the city of Trude.
To some, the ending may seem unsatisfactory in how Lundgren resolves the major questions brought up in the book. However, I feel that the ending is a perfect match for the tone set by Norberg’s persistent, yet absent-minded approach to his wife’s disappearance. Coming it at a relatively small 272 pages, this book would make an good and interesting weekend’s reading.
While it may seem like and oddly constructed who-done-it, The Facades is more an existential stroll through a surreal land. Stylistically, Lundgren’s writing is simply compelling. With sentences laden with bizarre and delightful metaphors he works up the reader’s inquisitiveness in both the mystery of Molly and the oddities that makes up the city of Trude.
To some, the ending may seem unsatisfactory in how Lundgren resolves the major questions brought up in the book. However, I feel that the ending is a perfect match for the tone set by Norberg’s persistent, yet absent-minded approach to his wife’s disappearance. Coming it at a relatively small 272 pages, this book would make an good and interesting weekend’s reading.
July 15, 2013
I received an advanced copy of this book at ALA and really enjoyed it. I've read many "near future dystopias" but this is a present-day, dystopic novel, set in the fictional midwestern city of Trude. Instead of inserting a bits of sci-fi and tech-based tropes, it lingers in the absurdist and existential. In my mind's eye, it is always overcast in Trude.
I immediately lent my copy to my sister, an architect. This is like invisible cities, she said. Never read it, now I've got another book to seek out.
Anyway, I found this story unique and familar at once. As a midwesterner, Trude sometimes felt a little too familiar...
I immediately lent my copy to my sister, an architect. This is like invisible cities, she said. Never read it, now I've got another book to seek out.
Anyway, I found this story unique and familar at once. As a midwesterner, Trude sometimes felt a little too familiar...
February 15, 2014
This book is rife with beautiful description, intriguing characters, and perplexing settings.
But it doesn't make any sense.
The guy's wife disappears. Nobody seems spectacularly concerned about her disappearance. Mysterious encoded messages pop up in the newspaper about her whereabouts, but lead nowhere.
He wanders around and has interactions with people that don't lead to anything.
Simply put, this book is all style and no substance.
Oh, and at the end, to cap all this off,
I don't regret having read this book, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it, either.
But it doesn't make any sense.
The guy's wife disappears. Nobody seems spectacularly concerned about her disappearance. Mysterious encoded messages pop up in the newspaper about her whereabouts, but lead nowhere.
He wanders around and has interactions with people that don't lead to anything.
Simply put, this book is all style and no substance.
Oh, and at the end, to cap all this off,
I don't regret having read this book, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it, either.
October 24, 2013
Quirky, magnetic, and multifaceted, The Facades is an unsolvable mystery of a book, but it's worth the effort! Vaguely reminiscent of Amelia Gray's Threats, the book has a slightly sinister undertone and an unreliable narrator in a familiar search for his missing wife. Structured like a literary labyrinth that serpentines around topics like marriage, family, loss, grief, sex, communication, and architecture, you may never find your way out!
December 29, 2013
I'm not sure why I was drawn to read this book, perhaps the rather quirky description of the city Trude. Quirky indeed, but that didn't really make up for the depressing interactions that the main character Sven has with the city and it's denizens. I'm not above reading about tragedy, but this guy didn't have much happen to him that could be called especially tragical (did his wife leave him?); he was just unable to change his circumstances and environment.
October 4, 2015
Explícito homenaje a Kafka y a toda la literatura germánica de una manera demasiado subrayada. La envoltura surreal y expresionista de la novela se olvida de contar realmente nada y este vacío interior no basta para sostener las fachadas, las descripciones arquitectónicas de una extraña ciudad, entre decimonónica y postmoderna, situada como una distopía del Medio Oeste norteamericano.
May 15, 2021
Esta primera novela del norteamericano Lundgren se acerca al género negro pero lo hace desde una vertiente diferente. Plagada de referencias europeas, la trama parece estar urdida por un novelista de este viejo continente, donde los personajes respiran un hálito existencialista. La desaparición de una cantante de ópera es el motor de la historia, en la que su marido, Sven Nordberg, actúa como detective noctámbulo y aficionado, viendo cómo su hijo adolescente se une a una iglesia fundamentalista. Nordberg deambula por las calles de Trude, una imaginaria ciudad brumosa y laberíntica, hasta cierto punto asfixiante, que parece reflejar el desasosiego que habita en los personajes, espectrales a veces. Tanto es así que la historia posee una cualidad onírica, se diría incluso que los personajes estén muertos sin saberlo y se encuentren en algún lugar del infierno, como almas en pena. Al igual que hizo Paul Auster con su denominada “trilogía de Nueva York” (también lo comparan con Michael Chabon y Jonathan Lethem), Lundgren plantea diversos misterios, aunque acaba centrándose más en una inquietante atmósfera antes que en la resolución de la trama (y ahí está quizás uno de los defectos del libro). Interesante el episodio en el que los bibliotecarios se atrincheran en la biblioteca ante la orden del alcalde de su demolición. Una bonita metáfora sobre la amenaza que se cierne sobre la cultura, y no sólo por culpa del pirateo, sino debido a ciertos grupos de poder político y religioso, sean occidentales o no.
JORDI PLANAS
JORDI PLANAS
January 11, 2020
An interesting book, evidently harrowing in its intent. I don't usually read intellectual stories as it were, usually preferring fantasy or escapism mystery/adventure. But this book had an echo of realism about it that resonated with me. We tend to forget that we are truely alone in this world, and it takes effort to engage and be part of society and community. It is very easy to slip away and perceive a fantasy existence, ignoring the reality experienced by others. I wouldn't recommend this book, but I wouldn't advise against reading it either. It is the type of story you need to want to read. Well written and engaging, it left me feeling uncertain and cautious. You feel for Sven, but that doesn't make you want to be his friend.
March 16, 2019
Who should read this book? People who have been dying for magic realist literature from the Midwest. Fargo was good for that, yes, but this is a whole other order of magnitude. Why should Latin America have all the fun?
This book has clever references, satirical observations, and clearly the architectural elements of the world creation were tremendous fun, but it is not my kind of book. The main character is unpleasant, self-pitying, self-centred and kind of creepy at times. I pretty much need to like and care about a character if I’m going to enjoy a novel.
And, note to the editor: a fur muff is worn on the hands to keep them warm. It is not a hat.
This book has clever references, satirical observations, and clearly the architectural elements of the world creation were tremendous fun, but it is not my kind of book. The main character is unpleasant, self-pitying, self-centred and kind of creepy at times. I pretty much need to like and care about a character if I’m going to enjoy a novel.
And, note to the editor: a fur muff is worn on the hands to keep them warm. It is not a hat.
December 12, 2017
An absurdist story that doesn't veer into comedy
This book has more in common with Camus than it does with Christopher Moore, and that's a good thing. The labyrinthine structure of Trude and the puzzling characters that live therein provide all of the necessary sense of unreality that this story needs to be an absurdist story without just playing it up for laughs like Heller and Moore often do.
This book has more in common with Camus than it does with Christopher Moore, and that's a good thing. The labyrinthine structure of Trude and the puzzling characters that live therein provide all of the necessary sense of unreality that this story needs to be an absurdist story without just playing it up for laughs like Heller and Moore often do.
January 4, 2019
While the author did a good job with motifs and some thematic elements, in the end this was just another at times gross book by a white dude, and I just did not care about the main character or any of his non-struggles. The surprise at the end was not surprising and even if it had been I didn't care because the rest of the plot was so bland. Also, women deserve better than the be depicted the way women are depicted in this book.
September 12, 2021
This book was bad.
The main character was an insecure paranoid asshole who also happened to be a pedophile? None of which was addressed or commented on.
The mystery of the missing wife was never adequately addressed or resolved, as with the journalist.
Also the use of random, uncommon words seemed to just point out the intelligence of the author but all it did was take you out of the story.
The main character was an insecure paranoid asshole who also happened to be a pedophile? None of which was addressed or commented on.
The mystery of the missing wife was never adequately addressed or resolved, as with the journalist.
Also the use of random, uncommon words seemed to just point out the intelligence of the author but all it did was take you out of the story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 29, 2019
I enjoyed this book very much. Some parts were screamingly comic and tragic at the same time - the vigilante librarians, the memoirists under extreme pressure to produce more and more memories. I don’t know that I completely understood it though, so will probably have another read.
September 26, 2023
They say all books will teach you one thing or another, whether you loathe or loved it. I wanna be kind and polite but if I’m being honest: this book is simply pointless.
The first half is pretty engaging, driving the reader to a climax - that does not exist. It was a disappointing read. :)
The first half is pretty engaging, driving the reader to a climax - that does not exist. It was a disappointing read. :)
August 3, 2017
It got me in at the start but I'm at a loss to make sense of the story.Well written though!
August 15, 2017
Twilight Zone and Lynch vibes.
December 9, 2018
Accidentally read this in a few hours and I loved it.
January 10, 2022
overall the entire was so super smart, and was too slow paced for my taste, but definitely enjoyed reading. the story wasnt too creative or intriguing but was good nonetheless.
October 6, 2022
Este libro tiene crisis de identidad.
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