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Every Arc Bends Its Radian
From PEN Award–winning author Sergio de la Pava comes an existential detective novel about a private investigator who flees New York City for Colombia after a personal tragedy and finds himself entangled in a young woman’s strange disappearance—which may be connected to one of the world’s most ruthless criminal organizations. Riv—poet, philosopher, private eye—arrives in Cali, Colombia, hoping to find nothing. Running away from his family and an unspeakable event surrounding his ex-wife Jane, Riv accidentally connects with his cousin Mauro and great Aunt Corelletta who asks him to find her daughter Angelica Alfa. No sooner is Riv on the trail when it becomes clear that not only are the cops not looking for Angelica, but they are actively preventing him from finding her. This could be a good thing because the police are clearly in the pocket of one Exeter Mondragon, a name best never uttered in public if one wants to stay alive. But Riv is not one to leave things incomplete. When his investigation leads him straight into the heart of Mondragon’s criminal empire, he is forced not only to face unimaginable horrors, but also to plunge into the deepest and most perplexing conundrums of the human condition. Lightning fast on the page and steeped in the cultural history of Columbia, Every Arc Bends Its Radian is a novel only Sergio de la Pava could write. As incredibly funny as it is ridiculously smart, it poses large philosophical questions while keeping you laughing. A novel idea about the biggest idea of them all—what in God’s name are we even put on earth for, this book is a singular exploration of the human mind.
265 pages, Hardcover
Published November 12, 2024
140 people are currently reading
5803 people want to read
About the author
Sergio de la Pava
8 books230 followersSergio de la Pava is the author of A Naked Singularity.
Sergio de la Pava is a writer who does not live in Brooklyn.
In August, 2013, Sergio won PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for his debut fiction, A Naked Singularity.
Sergio de la Pava is a writer who does not live in Brooklyn.
In August, 2013, Sergio won PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for his debut fiction, A Naked Singularity.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
March 7, 2025
I love an experimental novel, usually. But de la Pava is no Percival Everett.
Full review:
The mental life. That’s where true suffering is. The body is nothing in comparison. p20
Every Arc Bends Its Radian is a clearly experimental novel. It reads as though the author's primary goal was to execute this experiment, not write a cohesive story or develop realistic characters. Spatial fiction does this also, but this book is not that. I like experimental fiction, but I did not like this. The text really struggles with itself, since the author is trying to make it do so many things at once.
I recommend this book to readers who appreciate experimental fiction and nontraditional narrative forms, and those who are already familiar with the philosophy concepts at hand, such as graduate students in philosophy. Critics call this a smart book, and it might be, if you can tease everything out of it. I wish you luck with that.
“Close your eyes and count to death.” p153
Reading Notes
Three (or more) things I loved:
1. De La Pava gives the perfect character details, where we learn in only a few lines, not only where the MC comes from last, but also his attitude about the place. —¿ I guess I’m like a poet/ philosopher/ private eye? —¿ Is that a good job in the States? —It’s a weird country. p20 This is smart, efficient writing. I hope it persists. *edit It doesn't. Things get snaky and hard to follow.
2. The form the dialogue takes in this book is unusual, but I think it removes certain ambiguities that characterize accepted rules for dialog formatting.
3. This narrator definitely values work and earning. Even expresses this sentiment: Rooting around a dead woman’s room, what a way to make a living. The only thing worse is not making one. p22
4. I think this book makes an interesting point about human consciousness. —Maybe, Riv, life just cannot be squarely confronted sometimes. ¿You ever think of that? —Often. —And maybe we can never really know what’s happening in the mind of another. Those are hidden universes within our visible one and there’s no possibility of passage.... p120
Three (or less) things I didn't love:
This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.
1. The narrator says things like this, and I'm never sure if he's being inflammatory or playing word games. —...¿ Is it because I’m a woman? ¿Are you a sexist? —Yes, I’m a sexist. I believe the female sex is superior. p23 After all, putting anyone on a pedestal dehumanizes them. A man thinking women are superior is just another form of sexism.
2. Some of this material is nonsensical, like the title, which seems erudite but betrays a not-so-erudite understanding of the geometric concepts it names. A "radian" is a unit of measurement, like "inch" or "ounce." They are nouns, but not concrete objects. How can they be bent, exactly?
3. I like experimental fiction, but I feel like this book is experimenting with too many different elements, which affects the comprehensibility of the story and characters.
4. This book gives vibes of Junot Diaz's The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but I think Oscar Wao is cleaner. Even though the form and diction are experimental and there is quite a lot of Spanish, Oscar Wao can still be easily read and understood, even for readers who don't speak Spanish. This book tries to use the same effect, as it contains many passages in Spanish, but I don't think it achieves the same potent effect.
5. I despise the inclusion of philosophical concepts into the text and form. Yes, it's erudite, and it's also completely inaccessible.
6. This is the sort of book that makes the reader feel stupid, mostly because it writes down to the audience while also keeping the reader from connecting with its overly erudite elements. I wonder if De La Pava meant to confuse his readers, to alienate them? He achieves this, regardless of his intentions.
7. The torture scene is long and terribly detailed, but the part of it I really didn't like was that the torturer and the victim held an academic discussion about philosophy and God. To me this felt inauthentic, or at worst, disingenuous.
8. The book is clearly cross-genre, but I think its sci-fi elements draw the most attention. I think this one is being mismarketed.
Rating: 🪢🪢 /5 convoluted plots
Recommend? No, unless you want a real challenge
Finished: Nov 14 '24
Format: Digital arc, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
👤 philosophy
💬 erudite dialog
🖤 literary horror
🗨 jargon/dialect
Thank you to the author Sergio De La Pava, publishers Simon and Schuster, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of EVERY ARC BENDS ITS RADIAN. All views are mine.
Full review:
The mental life. That’s where true suffering is. The body is nothing in comparison. p20
Every Arc Bends Its Radian is a clearly experimental novel. It reads as though the author's primary goal was to execute this experiment, not write a cohesive story or develop realistic characters. Spatial fiction does this also, but this book is not that. I like experimental fiction, but I did not like this. The text really struggles with itself, since the author is trying to make it do so many things at once.
I recommend this book to readers who appreciate experimental fiction and nontraditional narrative forms, and those who are already familiar with the philosophy concepts at hand, such as graduate students in philosophy. Critics call this a smart book, and it might be, if you can tease everything out of it. I wish you luck with that.
“Close your eyes and count to death.” p153
Reading Notes
Three (or more) things I loved:
1. De La Pava gives the perfect character details, where we learn in only a few lines, not only where the MC comes from last, but also his attitude about the place. —¿ I guess I’m like a poet/ philosopher/ private eye? —¿ Is that a good job in the States? —It’s a weird country. p20 This is smart, efficient writing. I hope it persists. *edit It doesn't. Things get snaky and hard to follow.
2. The form the dialogue takes in this book is unusual, but I think it removes certain ambiguities that characterize accepted rules for dialog formatting.
3. This narrator definitely values work and earning. Even expresses this sentiment: Rooting around a dead woman’s room, what a way to make a living. The only thing worse is not making one. p22
4. I think this book makes an interesting point about human consciousness. —Maybe, Riv, life just cannot be squarely confronted sometimes. ¿You ever think of that? —Often. —And maybe we can never really know what’s happening in the mind of another. Those are hidden universes within our visible one and there’s no possibility of passage.... p120
Three (or less) things I didn't love:
This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.
1. The narrator says things like this, and I'm never sure if he's being inflammatory or playing word games. —...¿ Is it because I’m a woman? ¿Are you a sexist? —Yes, I’m a sexist. I believe the female sex is superior. p23 After all, putting anyone on a pedestal dehumanizes them. A man thinking women are superior is just another form of sexism.
2. Some of this material is nonsensical, like the title, which seems erudite but betrays a not-so-erudite understanding of the geometric concepts it names. A "radian" is a unit of measurement, like "inch" or "ounce." They are nouns, but not concrete objects. How can they be bent, exactly?
3. I like experimental fiction, but I feel like this book is experimenting with too many different elements, which affects the comprehensibility of the story and characters.
4. This book gives vibes of Junot Diaz's The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but I think Oscar Wao is cleaner. Even though the form and diction are experimental and there is quite a lot of Spanish, Oscar Wao can still be easily read and understood, even for readers who don't speak Spanish. This book tries to use the same effect, as it contains many passages in Spanish, but I don't think it achieves the same potent effect.
5. I despise the inclusion of philosophical concepts into the text and form. Yes, it's erudite, and it's also completely inaccessible.
6. This is the sort of book that makes the reader feel stupid, mostly because it writes down to the audience while also keeping the reader from connecting with its overly erudite elements. I wonder if De La Pava meant to confuse his readers, to alienate them? He achieves this, regardless of his intentions.
7. The torture scene is long and terribly detailed, but the part of it I really didn't like was that the torturer and the victim held an academic discussion about philosophy and God. To me this felt inauthentic, or at worst, disingenuous.
8. The book is clearly cross-genre, but I think its sci-fi elements draw the most attention. I think this one is being mismarketed.
Rating: 🪢🪢 /5 convoluted plots
Recommend? No, unless you want a real challenge
Finished: Nov 14 '24
Format: Digital arc, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
👤 philosophy
💬 erudite dialog
🖤 literary horror
🗨 jargon/dialect
Thank you to the author Sergio De La Pava, publishers Simon and Schuster, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of EVERY ARC BENDS ITS RADIAN. All views are mine.
August 22, 2025
Claire De Witt goes to Columbia. The country, not the university. That was my impression of the first 2/3 of this book.
Yes, the main character, Riv, is a 50 year old man, more inclined to modulate his emotions with alcohol than drugs. But that general vibe, the brief philosophical asides tossed around as the detective follows the clues, was pretty strong. Instead of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, the setting is Cali, Columbia in the wake of brutal drug lords. A normal life is possible only if you do your best to stay on the right side of Exeter Mondragon, possibly the wealthiest man in the world and a true incarnation of Satan.
But then the story descends into the grotesque when Riv, in pursuit of not only the missing young woman he was initially charged with finding but two other family members as well, ventures into Mondragon’s lair. The descriptions of the tortures conducted within took the edge off my reading pleasure, which never quite returned to its earlier level despite the fascinating and often amusing existential debate that closes the book.
All of this would equate to 3.5 stars rounded down - except for de la Pava’s brilliant use of language. You know that feeling when a word or phrase just pops out and makes you want to say “ooo, that was lovely!”? That happens a LOT in this book.
On that basis, I’m rounding up to 4 stars.
Yes, the main character, Riv, is a 50 year old man, more inclined to modulate his emotions with alcohol than drugs. But that general vibe, the brief philosophical asides tossed around as the detective follows the clues, was pretty strong. Instead of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, the setting is Cali, Columbia in the wake of brutal drug lords. A normal life is possible only if you do your best to stay on the right side of Exeter Mondragon, possibly the wealthiest man in the world and a true incarnation of Satan.
But then the story descends into the grotesque when Riv, in pursuit of not only the missing young woman he was initially charged with finding but two other family members as well, ventures into Mondragon’s lair. The descriptions of the tortures conducted within took the edge off my reading pleasure, which never quite returned to its earlier level despite the fascinating and often amusing existential debate that closes the book.
All of this would equate to 3.5 stars rounded down - except for de la Pava’s brilliant use of language. You know that feeling when a word or phrase just pops out and makes you want to say “ooo, that was lovely!”? That happens a LOT in this book.
On that basis, I’m rounding up to 4 stars.
November 9, 2024
I gave Every Arc Bends Its Radian by Sergio De La Pava my best effort, but it just isn’t resonating with me. I’m struggling with the prose, which feels disconnected and a bit stilted, leaving the narrative feeling scattered. Instead of feeling drawn into the story, I’m left feeling like I’m reading words without experiencing a cohesive journey. It could be that something was lost in translation, or maybe it’s simply a mismatch for my tastes. I really wanted to love the premise and the story, and I hope other readers connect with it more. Many thanks to Simon & Schuster for the Advance Reader’s Copy.
January 22, 2025
"Only thing this present is good for is distracting from the past. But something that relentless can only ever be quieted, never erased. The past part that keeps coming back to me now shouldn't even be particularly memorable."
"What is a person? It can't just be the body they occupy, which can change drastically without any resulting controversy over identity. If it's what we call personality, then what is personality? If personality is a kind of involuntary unconscious performance, there still has to be an underlying consistency that creates predictability, not necessarily in actions but at least in the actor."
"What is a person? It can't just be the body they occupy, which can change drastically without any resulting controversy over identity. If it's what we call personality, then what is personality? If personality is a kind of involuntary unconscious performance, there still has to be an underlying consistency that creates predictability, not necessarily in actions but at least in the actor."
January 16, 2025
Now the minimally nice woman in customs wants to know the purpose of my trip, and when I say the purpose is «amnesia» I know immediately that's a mistake. But instead of fixing it I make it worse when I can't answer an even simpler question: Where are you going?
Where am I going?
Where am I going?
August 1, 2024
You know those stereotypical bad guys with huge vocabularies who use big words ALL the time, even when smaller words would actually be more correct? Well, now imagine that almost every character in the novel, including the narrator, talks like that, all the time. Now sprinkle in lots of vague wool-gathering segments with even bigger words that make less sense, and may not actually work in English. *sigh*
I am hoping that the original text of this book is better, because the English translation was really bad. No one in real life talks like that. The dialogue between some of the rougher characters was less bad, but I live in a highly Hispanic part of the US, and no one I know with a more Spanish influenced urban speech style talks like the characters that seem to be aiming that way, either. So, if you can read Spanish, maybe try the original, because until a master translator takes on this project, this one is tough.
Also, this is not a mystery novel. It has a sort of mystery plot, but is more of a literary horror novel. Seriously, the more hardcore bits with Mr. Mondragon's lair are horror genre, and this section goes on way too long to shelve this book in the mystery genre section. It may be horror-light, but it is horror.
All that said, I did actually finish this book. and not just because it is mercifully short. So, maybe a better translation of this book can happen eventually so readers who are not already fans can experience this book in a more satisfying form.
I am hoping that the original text of this book is better, because the English translation was really bad. No one in real life talks like that. The dialogue between some of the rougher characters was less bad, but I live in a highly Hispanic part of the US, and no one I know with a more Spanish influenced urban speech style talks like the characters that seem to be aiming that way, either. So, if you can read Spanish, maybe try the original, because until a master translator takes on this project, this one is tough.
Also, this is not a mystery novel. It has a sort of mystery plot, but is more of a literary horror novel. Seriously, the more hardcore bits with Mr. Mondragon's lair are horror genre, and this section goes on way too long to shelve this book in the mystery genre section. It may be horror-light, but it is horror.
All that said, I did actually finish this book. and not just because it is mercifully short. So, maybe a better translation of this book can happen eventually so readers who are not already fans can experience this book in a more satisfying form.
September 29, 2025
This is literally a book of 2 halves.
The 1st half - a witty dialogue-driven noir detective story. I really loved this part.
The 2nd half (perhaps the 2nd part of split itself into 2 also) - morphs in a SF-like meditation on what it is to be human. This is also dialogue heavy but, to me, in a ponderous didactic mode which I didn't find at all engaging.
The 1st half - a witty dialogue-driven noir detective story. I really loved this part.
The 2nd half (perhaps the 2nd part of split itself into 2 also) - morphs in a SF-like meditation on what it is to be human. This is also dialogue heavy but, to me, in a ponderous didactic mode which I didn't find at all engaging.
November 29, 2024
When you pick this up, stay strong until the third quarter.
June 13, 2024
I genuinely feel like I lacked the intelligence and philosophical capacity to understand this book.
Writing a review for it would be a disservice and insult to the author because I don’t understand fully what I just read.
I’m sure this was a good book, it just wasn’t fluid for me.
Nothing was laid out as in actually explained in a coherent way. Just a bunch of concepts and sciencey jargon. It’s like one thing was said, but meant to be interpreted differently. And the whole book is like that.
Also I don’t speak fluent Spanish and there are plenty of quotes or ramblings without translation.
Eh.
Thanks to Netgalley for the eARC
2 ⭐️
Writing a review for it would be a disservice and insult to the author because I don’t understand fully what I just read.
I’m sure this was a good book, it just wasn’t fluid for me.
Nothing was laid out as in actually explained in a coherent way. Just a bunch of concepts and sciencey jargon. It’s like one thing was said, but meant to be interpreted differently. And the whole book is like that.
Also I don’t speak fluent Spanish and there are plenty of quotes or ramblings without translation.
Eh.
Thanks to Netgalley for the eARC
2 ⭐️
February 15, 2025
I usually try to write humorous reviews for books I hate, but this was infuriatingly bad - so pretentious and flowery that it was embarrassingly bathetic and nonsensical.
The bad guys were very bad and spoke very pretentiously (maybe they had a lackey holding a thesaurus, a calculator, and an encyclopaedia for them so they could pick their words?), and the main character was very deep and philosophical.
Depthless characters, an uninteresting story, and an unappealing writing style (to me). This was partly experimental and had a nice cover, which is why I almost gave it two stars, but it was so tough to get through. This is the type of book you may want to put up with - as some reviews mention, the ending saves it a bit (it involves ) - so I kept reading. But sadly, it wasn’t satisfying for me.
The bad guys were very bad and spoke very pretentiously (maybe they had a lackey holding a thesaurus, a calculator, and an encyclopaedia for them so they could pick their words?), and the main character was very deep and philosophical.
Depthless characters, an uninteresting story, and an unappealing writing style (to me). This was partly experimental and had a nice cover, which is why I almost gave it two stars, but it was so tough to get through. This is the type of book you may want to put up with - as some reviews mention, the ending saves it a bit (it involves ) - so I kept reading. But sadly, it wasn’t satisfying for me.
November 13, 2024
Riv del Rio didn't travel to Colombia looking for a new case; rather, the poet/detective was seeking reprieve after a tragedy involving the woman he loves. But a case falls in his lap via a family friend. Carlotta Ochoa's daughter, Angelica Alfa, has vanished. As Riv and his cousins explore the missing persons case further, they discover an unpleasant truth: the powerful Exeter Mondragon is pulling the strings, preventing her investigation from being pursued. But Riv won't give up, even when all signs point to the brilliant young woman already being dead.
The further Riv digs, though, the more unsettling things he finds. Angelica possesses a phenomenal, practically incomprehensible, level of intelligence. Her father was involved in some bizarre business ventures of his own. And when Riv finally comes face to face with Mondragon himself, the situation explodes into a crisis far beyond a single missing person. What the detective now faces involves the nature—and the future—of existence itself.
Every Arc Bends Its Radian is a peculiar book, and that's a compliment. It begins as a somewhat philosophical detective story before going completely off the rails in its second half. The whodunnit (and the "why," although that's a far denser topic) is addressed by the end, but the mystery is a means to an end. This book courts ideas of faith, what it means to be human, and what role our ever-advancing technology plays in our evolution. If I have a complaint, it's that indications of speakers in long conversations are rare. This isn't an issue when Riv and a second character are debating back and forth, since there are only two players and their personalities speak for themselves. But in early chapters, when Riv is in conversation with both of his cousins and they are of similar minds, it becomes difficult to follow the thread of conversation. That aside, this is a surprising and challenging book that will thwart some readers while intriguing others. Personally, I'm in the second camp.
The further Riv digs, though, the more unsettling things he finds. Angelica possesses a phenomenal, practically incomprehensible, level of intelligence. Her father was involved in some bizarre business ventures of his own. And when Riv finally comes face to face with Mondragon himself, the situation explodes into a crisis far beyond a single missing person. What the detective now faces involves the nature—and the future—of existence itself.
Every Arc Bends Its Radian is a peculiar book, and that's a compliment. It begins as a somewhat philosophical detective story before going completely off the rails in its second half. The whodunnit (and the "why," although that's a far denser topic) is addressed by the end, but the mystery is a means to an end. This book courts ideas of faith, what it means to be human, and what role our ever-advancing technology plays in our evolution. If I have a complaint, it's that indications of speakers in long conversations are rare. This isn't an issue when Riv and a second character are debating back and forth, since there are only two players and their personalities speak for themselves. But in early chapters, when Riv is in conversation with both of his cousins and they are of similar minds, it becomes difficult to follow the thread of conversation. That aside, this is a surprising and challenging book that will thwart some readers while intriguing others. Personally, I'm in the second camp.
January 28, 2025
could not get into this to save my life. the abstraction just didn’t work but i respect an author trying other pursuits
January 13, 2025
In the spirit of the book, it would be presumptuous to say that this is the only existential detective story in existence that features a philosopher detective searching through Cali, Colombia for a missing girl who may or may not be dead, and who may or may not have been kidnapped by a criminal genius, who may or may not be Satan.
I mean, it’s not exactly a crowded genre, but there might be other books out there just like this, written by a roomful of stoned monkeys fighting over a single typewriter.
It’s a fascinating read. I’m not sure it’s necessary to agree with it, or even understand it. The book just happens. Let it happen. There are worse ways to spend your time.
Two stars for style and one star for content .... or maybe the other way around?
I mean, it’s not exactly a crowded genre, but there might be other books out there just like this, written by a roomful of stoned monkeys fighting over a single typewriter.
It’s a fascinating read. I’m not sure it’s necessary to agree with it, or even understand it. The book just happens. Let it happen. There are worse ways to spend your time.
Two stars for style and one star for content .... or maybe the other way around?
April 14, 2025
This is not a detective story. Ignore the blurb. I'd say the author wrote the last third of the book while very high. Then he tried to turn it into a mystery. I found it impossible to buy into the nonsense about a fantasy super-villain who killed god or a mystery woman who is the next link in a cybernetic future. I listened to it as an audiobook, and I bailed out with half an hour left.
January 4, 2025
A circular circuitous sort of semi-discussion.
February 14, 2025
Rep: Colombian cast & setting
March 16, 2025
De La Pava captures random serendipitous moments of investigating cutting edge phenomena. In this case, a kidnapping without an apparent reason. I thought the first half was stronger.
July 21, 2025
Do not do as I did and listen to 43% last November then finish the following July
December 16, 2024
This book, which sheds its desquise as a classic PI novel and takes form of sci-fi thriller, is a kamikaze dive directly into the philosophical grapplings of the essence of life.
December 17, 2024
The author knows just enough philosophy to be irritating but not enough to be interesting.
Halfway through the book descends into horrific and excessive depiction of torture. No warning.
Halfway through the book descends into horrific and excessive depiction of torture. No warning.
September 25, 2025
Bolaño-style semi-existential mystery becomes pastiche of Saw with a crime boss becomes moral tale with an AI/human, 10,000 leagues under the sea. Plenty of philosophical references but no really cohesive philosophy besides a sort of fakely hardboiled offer of humanism. This book was fun and easy and I think it would probably teach well but I’m not impassioned intellectually by it. Impressed by the way it easily integrates some Plato and Descartes and Wittgenstein and so many others into a generally thriller mystery plot, yes. But there’s little synthesis of all that erudition into something unified, so…
Read
May 4, 2025This one was not for me
August 22, 2024
I appreciated the novel’s philosophical registers and found the way the plot unfolded to be pretty engrossing, especially in the final third of the book. It’s a real page-turner once Riv gets to Mondragon’s lair. There were some passages I really liked reading and experiences that were really well-said (I’m thinking in particular of the passage about girl whose eye was injured by a firework, the descriptions of rivers and saints, and meditations on memory). I really wanted to like this book more.
However, it felt like this novel just didn’t stick the landing toward the end. There are key plot holes that don’t make sense, and some of the characters’ motivations are a bit random and unconvincing. It felt out of character that someone as principled as Riv would alter his dead girlfriend’s suicide note. Exactly what lies at the bottom of the ocean and why Angelica wants to destroy thousands of innocent people is unclear and risks going into flat-supervillain-behavior territory. And her downfall also seems improbable. Would a superhuman capable of knowing every recorded thing (including the exact wording of Jane’s suicide note from an entire continent away) actually not be able to find the killing device Riv hid and the password he changed on the ship’s controls? Why didn’t she simply adjust the oxygen levels so she could live? Additionally, while I sometimes appreciated the kind of heady and dense ways some characters speak, I do think it was a bit overused. Mondragon, Angelica, and Riv all speak in this register, but I think it would have been better to differentiate them tonally.
So my feelings about this book are mixed. It has some major flaws but also takes some risks I wish more contemporary books took, and it has some real merits.
However, it felt like this novel just didn’t stick the landing toward the end. There are key plot holes that don’t make sense, and some of the characters’ motivations are a bit random and unconvincing. It felt out of character that someone as principled as Riv would alter his dead girlfriend’s suicide note. Exactly what lies at the bottom of the ocean and why Angelica wants to destroy thousands of innocent people is unclear and risks going into flat-supervillain-behavior territory. And her downfall also seems improbable. Would a superhuman capable of knowing every recorded thing (including the exact wording of Jane’s suicide note from an entire continent away) actually not be able to find the killing device Riv hid and the password he changed on the ship’s controls? Why didn’t she simply adjust the oxygen levels so she could live? Additionally, while I sometimes appreciated the kind of heady and dense ways some characters speak, I do think it was a bit overused. Mondragon, Angelica, and Riv all speak in this register, but I think it would have been better to differentiate them tonally.
So my feelings about this book are mixed. It has some major flaws but also takes some risks I wish more contemporary books took, and it has some real merits.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 30, 2024
DNF. Annoying, precious, not as clever or funny as it seems to think it is; reminds me of something a Woody Allen character would have written, something that seems clever and memorable only to the other characters by necessity of the narrative. (Play It Again Sam, Husbands and Wives…).
October 30, 2024
I went into this one with an open mind, and I feel I tried really hard to enjoy this, but I just couldn't. Is the issue that it was translated, and the translation couldn't match the original? I have no idea. All I know is that I had to work really hard to even half understand what the hell was going on and what was being said. It wasn't a pleasant journey for me. The last third of the book switched gears, becoming a type of sit-around-the-campfire drunken college discussion about humanity and our reason to be. Hmmmm.
This just didn't work for me.
I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being left freely.
This just didn't work for me.
I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being left freely.
October 15, 2024
My thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an advanced copy of this novel about a detective who has come to a city to hide himself, but finds himself looking for a missing girl and vying with a person whose name is never never uttered, though his power spreads far and wide.
I used to love mysteries, and still will read some, but they have to be of a certain type. I still like early stories of knights errant walking down lonely streets, but most modern stories do nothing for me. Police procedurals might as well be science fiction or fantasy for the effort put into solving crimes does not seem to happen at all in the real world. Cozy mysteries are odd too me. Many have cute people solving murders while trading recipes or knitting tips. And private detective stories are in a rut, a rut that seems to be growing. I like stories set in places I am unfamiliar with, with writing that is not concerned with whodunit, rather that whydunnit. Mysteries about humans, and why they do the things they do, either going forward to find answers, creating questions that need to be solved, or even how the go on when things fall away. A story like this one. Every Arc Bends Its Radian by Sergio de la Pava is a story about a man running away, looking for a missing girl, in a city that doesn't care, overseen by a character whose power is so strong, people pretend he doesn't exist.
Riv del Rio has come to Cali, Colombia, a country familiar to him, running maybe, escaping more likely, from his family and and his actions in the United States. Confused trying to enter the country, Riv calls on his cousin for help, which gets him involved in more problems. Riv has been a poet, in a few magazines, a philosopher two semesters short of a degree and a private detective, good at taking photos of guilty men leaving motels. A rich matron, a friend to the family wants Riv to look for her daughter, a good girl who has gone missing. Riv takes the case, but finds that he seems to be the only one interested in finding the missing girl. The police seem to be doing everything they can to make Riv give up the case. The more Riv looks into things the more he finds that that missing girl is tied into a a powerful person, one who no likes to talk of, as it might make bad things happen. Riv feels a promise is a promise, and continues to investigate, even if the ultmate cost is death, or even rebirth.
A novel that changes style halfway through, and with plenty of twists, and ideas, a lot of them weird, different, and yet compulsively readable. Imagine a book written by French author Patrick Modiano, for distance and sadness, edited by Clive Barker for horror, with Italian director Dario Argento adding style and brash storytelling. I enjoyed this story, though I must say it is not for everyone. There is a lot of history, a lot of metaphysical thinking, a lot of violence, and implied violence, and a lot of questions about reality. de la Pava is a very good writer, able to make characters seem real, even if they think they are. The story is strong, and rough, and yet funny in places one doesn't expect and can turn on a dime. Riv goes through a lot though he feels he might deserve it. A thoughtful, unsettling, really thrilling kind of story, one that stays with the reader.
I liked this a lot, and even a few days later am still thinking about certain moments. That's a good and bad thing as some of it is rather disturbing. I look forward to more books by Sergio de la Pava.
I used to love mysteries, and still will read some, but they have to be of a certain type. I still like early stories of knights errant walking down lonely streets, but most modern stories do nothing for me. Police procedurals might as well be science fiction or fantasy for the effort put into solving crimes does not seem to happen at all in the real world. Cozy mysteries are odd too me. Many have cute people solving murders while trading recipes or knitting tips. And private detective stories are in a rut, a rut that seems to be growing. I like stories set in places I am unfamiliar with, with writing that is not concerned with whodunit, rather that whydunnit. Mysteries about humans, and why they do the things they do, either going forward to find answers, creating questions that need to be solved, or even how the go on when things fall away. A story like this one. Every Arc Bends Its Radian by Sergio de la Pava is a story about a man running away, looking for a missing girl, in a city that doesn't care, overseen by a character whose power is so strong, people pretend he doesn't exist.
Riv del Rio has come to Cali, Colombia, a country familiar to him, running maybe, escaping more likely, from his family and and his actions in the United States. Confused trying to enter the country, Riv calls on his cousin for help, which gets him involved in more problems. Riv has been a poet, in a few magazines, a philosopher two semesters short of a degree and a private detective, good at taking photos of guilty men leaving motels. A rich matron, a friend to the family wants Riv to look for her daughter, a good girl who has gone missing. Riv takes the case, but finds that he seems to be the only one interested in finding the missing girl. The police seem to be doing everything they can to make Riv give up the case. The more Riv looks into things the more he finds that that missing girl is tied into a a powerful person, one who no likes to talk of, as it might make bad things happen. Riv feels a promise is a promise, and continues to investigate, even if the ultmate cost is death, or even rebirth.
A novel that changes style halfway through, and with plenty of twists, and ideas, a lot of them weird, different, and yet compulsively readable. Imagine a book written by French author Patrick Modiano, for distance and sadness, edited by Clive Barker for horror, with Italian director Dario Argento adding style and brash storytelling. I enjoyed this story, though I must say it is not for everyone. There is a lot of history, a lot of metaphysical thinking, a lot of violence, and implied violence, and a lot of questions about reality. de la Pava is a very good writer, able to make characters seem real, even if they think they are. The story is strong, and rough, and yet funny in places one doesn't expect and can turn on a dime. Riv goes through a lot though he feels he might deserve it. A thoughtful, unsettling, really thrilling kind of story, one that stays with the reader.
I liked this a lot, and even a few days later am still thinking about certain moments. That's a good and bad thing as some of it is rather disturbing. I look forward to more books by Sergio de la Pava.
March 16, 2025
The history of all hitherto-existing societies is the history of monsters. Homo sapiens is a bringer forth of monsters as reason’s dream. They are not pathologies but symptoms, diagnoses, glories, games, and terrors.
- China Miéville, Theses on Monsters
But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.
- Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder
The two maps at the front of this novel let you know there will be monsters. They are charming, seemingly hand-drawn maps of the region of Colombia where Every Arc Bends Its Radian sets its action. The second is a blow-up of a section of the first, zoomed in on the city of Calí, highlighting locales that our detective hero will visit. Everybody knows what a map is, by its conventional or dictionary definition. A map represents an area. It shows you what is there. Many maps name the features of the area, and, like the maps in this novel, some maps even provide a key that does the service of keeping the lovely drawing uncluttered by too much text. There’s another tradition in older maps from the days when much of the world was not yet explored. Map makers would label blank spaces Terra incognita for unknown lands, or, more dramatically, hic sunt dracones, here by dragons, warning of dangers suspected to lurk in those places, waiting for travelers. Sergio De La Pava’s maps don’t contain that text, but the blown-up second map has a picture of an alligator and another of a large-mouthed, world-devouring jungle cave. When his Colombian American ojo privado, Riv del Rio, tours Calí in search of a missing young woman, he encounters a number of monsters, including a criminal evil genius named Exeter Mondragon (initials EM, noted) and a worse one after him.
Every Arc Bends Its Radian was published last November by Simon & Schuster. It is Sergio De La Pava’s fourth novel. It is an uneven work, a tale of two halves. The first 150+ pages are a private-eye-missing-person novel that would satisfy many readers of the hard-boiled tradition. De La Pava’s style is witty and observant. In contrast, the last 100 pages are an experiment in philosophical fiction. This veers to a Hamlet-like jousting routine between the detective and two successive antagonists. The villains lean into lengthy villain monologues. By lengthy, I mean as long as 15 consecutive pages. As De La Pava clearly knew how the swerve would feel, he has a character say, very late in the novel, “You’re like a cartoon villain. Disclosing your plan to me while I can still counter it.” As a meta commentary on the chapters around it, my initial reaction to it was frankly bafflement, but I read the novel a second time, and I began to appreciate the dream-like nature of the end.
- China Miéville, Theses on Monsters
But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.
- Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder
The two maps at the front of this novel let you know there will be monsters. They are charming, seemingly hand-drawn maps of the region of Colombia where Every Arc Bends Its Radian sets its action. The second is a blow-up of a section of the first, zoomed in on the city of Calí, highlighting locales that our detective hero will visit. Everybody knows what a map is, by its conventional or dictionary definition. A map represents an area. It shows you what is there. Many maps name the features of the area, and, like the maps in this novel, some maps even provide a key that does the service of keeping the lovely drawing uncluttered by too much text. There’s another tradition in older maps from the days when much of the world was not yet explored. Map makers would label blank spaces Terra incognita for unknown lands, or, more dramatically, hic sunt dracones, here by dragons, warning of dangers suspected to lurk in those places, waiting for travelers. Sergio De La Pava’s maps don’t contain that text, but the blown-up second map has a picture of an alligator and another of a large-mouthed, world-devouring jungle cave. When his Colombian American ojo privado, Riv del Rio, tours Calí in search of a missing young woman, he encounters a number of monsters, including a criminal evil genius named Exeter Mondragon (initials EM, noted) and a worse one after him.
Every Arc Bends Its Radian was published last November by Simon & Schuster. It is Sergio De La Pava’s fourth novel. It is an uneven work, a tale of two halves. The first 150+ pages are a private-eye-missing-person novel that would satisfy many readers of the hard-boiled tradition. De La Pava’s style is witty and observant. In contrast, the last 100 pages are an experiment in philosophical fiction. This veers to a Hamlet-like jousting routine between the detective and two successive antagonists. The villains lean into lengthy villain monologues. By lengthy, I mean as long as 15 consecutive pages. As De La Pava clearly knew how the swerve would feel, he has a character say, very late in the novel, “You’re like a cartoon villain. Disclosing your plan to me while I can still counter it.” As a meta commentary on the chapters around it, my initial reaction to it was frankly bafflement, but I read the novel a second time, and I began to appreciate the dream-like nature of the end.
December 20, 2024
Sergio de la Pava has written two of my ten favourite novels of the 21st century, so I went into this one with considerable trepidation, after seeing its low review scores on Amazon and elsewhere.
For the first half of this slim book, I relished the familiar comfort of his propulsive, wordplay-filled dialogue, and his absurdist twist on hard-boiled crime fiction. Not only was this good, it was so recognisably de la Pava.
Then, halfway through, a sudden switch-up in chapter formatting signals a more fundamental change, one which is barely hinted at in any of the official blurbs, so I'll be careful not to spoil anything here. But I will say that the novel changes genre entirely. It's disorienting and bewildering, and clearly it's supposed to be.
It's not entirely clear to me what it was about this book that made it feel less enjoyable to me than his others. Part of me wants to attribute it to the experience of thinking the book was about one thing when it was actually about something else entirely, but that was the case to varying degrees with his other novels as well, especially Lost Empress — which dressed up as a sports comedy but carried some serious existential themes.
Similarly, in the second half of the novel, the fast-paced witty dialogue turns into lengthy back and forth monologues between characters, full-page rants full of philosophical musing and villlain-origin-story type exposition. But it feels disingenuous to criticise a de la Pava novel for having unnaturalistic dialogue. Of course it does! Nobody really talks like de la Pava's characters do, ever. That's part of why he's so great to read.
Sadly, it just boils down to this one not working for me as well as his previous two novels did. I still got plenty of enjoyment out of it, many chuckles and a few thrills. A 4-star book by de la Pava is still better than a lot of stuff in my to read list.
For the first half of this slim book, I relished the familiar comfort of his propulsive, wordplay-filled dialogue, and his absurdist twist on hard-boiled crime fiction. Not only was this good, it was so recognisably de la Pava.
Then, halfway through, a sudden switch-up in chapter formatting signals a more fundamental change, one which is barely hinted at in any of the official blurbs, so I'll be careful not to spoil anything here. But I will say that the novel changes genre entirely. It's disorienting and bewildering, and clearly it's supposed to be.
It's not entirely clear to me what it was about this book that made it feel less enjoyable to me than his others. Part of me wants to attribute it to the experience of thinking the book was about one thing when it was actually about something else entirely, but that was the case to varying degrees with his other novels as well, especially Lost Empress — which dressed up as a sports comedy but carried some serious existential themes.
Similarly, in the second half of the novel, the fast-paced witty dialogue turns into lengthy back and forth monologues between characters, full-page rants full of philosophical musing and villlain-origin-story type exposition. But it feels disingenuous to criticise a de la Pava novel for having unnaturalistic dialogue. Of course it does! Nobody really talks like de la Pava's characters do, ever. That's part of why he's so great to read.
Sadly, it just boils down to this one not working for me as well as his previous two novels did. I still got plenty of enjoyment out of it, many chuckles and a few thrills. A 4-star book by de la Pava is still better than a lot of stuff in my to read list.
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