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Inclúyanme afuera
Una novela sofisticada, elegante, inteligente y profundamente radical. Es la historia de Mara, una intérprete simultánea que se instala en un pueblo bonaerense para seguir un plan autoimpuesto: pasar un año en silencio. Pocas relaciones sociales, pasar inadvertida, volverse invisible. El avance de la trama, el progreso de las peripecias, y la atmósfera narrativa que desemboca en un final deslumbrante, recuerdan a las grandes novelas modernas sobre el complot, el sabotaje, la locura y el anarquismo.
176 pages, Paperback
First published February 20, 2014
11 people are currently reading
557 people want to read
About the author
María Sonia Cristoff
21 books33 followersMaría Sonia Cristoff es una novelista y cronista argentina con tres novelas, dos libros de no ficción y muchos artículos y cuentos publicados en prensa internacional y volúmenes colectivos.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
January 11, 2021
there is something about recent latin american literature. maybe an effortlessness. maybe a lightness. even when the topics are not light, the tone is light. and i say this having read the far-from-light and in fact quite brutal Hurricane Season. there is a playfulness, a delightful lack of ponderousness. it's literature that doesn't take itself too seriously. this is the gift of postmodernism, at least when not in the hands of white guys.
i loved this novel, which i read in english in the fabulous translation by katherine silver. it starts off with an experiment. the protagonist, mara, decides to spend a year talking as little as possible. in order to succeed, she moves to a small town where she doesn't know anyone, and chooses to be a museum guard. at first things move along quite as planned, then they, hmm, don't. hilarity ensues.
behind this funny, breezy novel there is a powerful critique of consumerism, of colonial appropriation and of the arrogance of men. it is also a super smart investigation of language, what it does, what it doesn't, when we need it, when we don't. it's all intriguing and clever and fun and it's amazing that all this takes barely more than 100 pages. i recommend it highly.
i loved this novel, which i read in english in the fabulous translation by katherine silver. it starts off with an experiment. the protagonist, mara, decides to spend a year talking as little as possible. in order to succeed, she moves to a small town where she doesn't know anyone, and chooses to be a museum guard. at first things move along quite as planned, then they, hmm, don't. hilarity ensues.
behind this funny, breezy novel there is a powerful critique of consumerism, of colonial appropriation and of the arrogance of men. it is also a super smart investigation of language, what it does, what it doesn't, when we need it, when we don't. it's all intriguing and clever and fun and it's amazing that all this takes barely more than 100 pages. i recommend it highly.
May 25, 2016
Como suele pasar en cierto "ambiente" de la literatura argentina esta de moda no contar nada y luego explicar (en entrevistas, intervenciones varias, lecturas, charlas) que se contó todo. De esa manera aparece un mecanismo interesante en donde se subestima al lector que supuestamente "no entiende" o "no le da" para entender el subtexto de la trama. No sé porque pasa esto pero es algo que pasa y como micro fenómeno es interesante porque da cuenta que la literatura argentina nunca entendió que leer debe ser un placer y no una tortura. Pero la balanza siempre se inclino por sobre la tortura, como cuando te agarra un chico neurótico de Puan y te habla de lo difícil que es escribir y lo complicado que es enfrentarse a eso y entras en una diatriba que sabes estúpida pero toleras por respeto al otro.
Es realmente desconcertante como no se escribe para entretener, como si fuera un pecado, y se escribe para arrastrarse entre las palabras. Saer ufffff, y luego demonizar a cualquier vertiente de la literatura que vaya por ese lado, Cortazar en sus cuentos, como si la vocación final fuera solo vale en tanto y en cuanto sea realmente difícil.
Ese tipo de egoísmos son los que siguen constituyendo a Buenos Aires como un local de provincia y no como una sociedad cosmpolita. En lo cosmpolita si hay talento se revolea y si hay conocimiento se brinda, porque todo eso se sostiene con plena y absoluta seguridad. No es el caso de nuestros escritores e intelectuales.
¿Y para que digo todo esto? Porque nuevamente me topo con una novela que parece, según las reseñas, dice un montón de cosas, pero en el papel no dice nada. Una piba se cansa de todo y se manda a mudar a un pueblo y no quiere hablar. Quién es, por qué lo hace, cómo lo sostiene, cuándo decidió hacerlo....no lo sabemos. Y esa es la construcción que interesa, no las insufribles observaciones sobre dos caballos disecados o los párrafos naturalistas ponchados que el lector puede bien saltearse.
¿Por qué es tan difícil darle razones, sentimientos y profundidad a los personajes en la literatura argentina? ¿Por qué parece tan imposible dotarlos de vida?
Bueno quizás porque la literatura argentina detesta la vida.
Es realmente desconcertante como no se escribe para entretener, como si fuera un pecado, y se escribe para arrastrarse entre las palabras. Saer ufffff, y luego demonizar a cualquier vertiente de la literatura que vaya por ese lado, Cortazar en sus cuentos, como si la vocación final fuera solo vale en tanto y en cuanto sea realmente difícil.
Ese tipo de egoísmos son los que siguen constituyendo a Buenos Aires como un local de provincia y no como una sociedad cosmpolita. En lo cosmpolita si hay talento se revolea y si hay conocimiento se brinda, porque todo eso se sostiene con plena y absoluta seguridad. No es el caso de nuestros escritores e intelectuales.
¿Y para que digo todo esto? Porque nuevamente me topo con una novela que parece, según las reseñas, dice un montón de cosas, pero en el papel no dice nada. Una piba se cansa de todo y se manda a mudar a un pueblo y no quiere hablar. Quién es, por qué lo hace, cómo lo sostiene, cuándo decidió hacerlo....no lo sabemos. Y esa es la construcción que interesa, no las insufribles observaciones sobre dos caballos disecados o los párrafos naturalistas ponchados que el lector puede bien saltearse.
¿Por qué es tan difícil darle razones, sentimientos y profundidad a los personajes en la literatura argentina? ¿Por qué parece tan imposible dotarlos de vida?
Bueno quizás porque la literatura argentina detesta la vida.
March 17, 2020
A strange little book. Not strange in a bad way. The whole idea of an MC who takes a year out of her life to go to a small town and a job where she thinks her silence will not matter. Why? And her strange obsession with her book of rhetoric. Then her spiral into spying.
This book can not really be put into a genre. Inserted are bits of Argentinian history and other tid bits of knowledge. But still why is a woman silent, does she choose it does it choose her?
This book can not really be put into a genre. Inserted are bits of Argentinian history and other tid bits of knowledge. But still why is a woman silent, does she choose it does it choose her?
April 3, 2020
2.5 stars
(#gifted @transitbooks) I had high hopes for this little novella, which promised to be ‘an exploration of the range and expression of female silence’. Our protagonist Mara moves to a small provincial town in Argentina and challenges herself to speak as little as possible for a full year.
.
I wanted a thoughtful, introspective musing on why Mara decided to stop talking, expecting a sort of pared-down Vox (a very heavy handed novel). Instead I got taxidermy and horses. Lots of it. There was also a tiny bit of insight into Mara’s previous life as an interpreter, which I liked! And which explained some of her decision to stop talking.
Cristoff includes tonnes of extracts from (legitimate) historical documents which are on display at the museum where Mara now works as a guard. Some of it was fascinating in itself, but the threads never really came together into a cohesive narrative. For example, I discovered a bizarre medical art experiment called Que Le Cheval Vive en Moi, where a French artist injected herself with horse immunoglobulins before undergoing a blood transfusion with horse blood, successfully due to the build up of her immune system. She said she felt like a super-human, hyper-aware and hyper-sensitive. All well and good, but what exactly does it have to do with the story? I have to say it left me scratching my head a little.
.
I imagine that for some readers this will be a brilliant read. For me, it was only okay. The translation by Katherine Silver was tightly controlled. Cristoff occasionally employs long, run-on sentences filled with verb after verb which could have seemed clumsy but Silver handles them well. These were among the flashes of good that I found among the opacity. Unfortunately not enough to pull this one above a 3 for me.
(#gifted @transitbooks) I had high hopes for this little novella, which promised to be ‘an exploration of the range and expression of female silence’. Our protagonist Mara moves to a small provincial town in Argentina and challenges herself to speak as little as possible for a full year.
.
I wanted a thoughtful, introspective musing on why Mara decided to stop talking, expecting a sort of pared-down Vox (a very heavy handed novel). Instead I got taxidermy and horses. Lots of it. There was also a tiny bit of insight into Mara’s previous life as an interpreter, which I liked! And which explained some of her decision to stop talking.
Cristoff includes tonnes of extracts from (legitimate) historical documents which are on display at the museum where Mara now works as a guard. Some of it was fascinating in itself, but the threads never really came together into a cohesive narrative. For example, I discovered a bizarre medical art experiment called Que Le Cheval Vive en Moi, where a French artist injected herself with horse immunoglobulins before undergoing a blood transfusion with horse blood, successfully due to the build up of her immune system. She said she felt like a super-human, hyper-aware and hyper-sensitive. All well and good, but what exactly does it have to do with the story? I have to say it left me scratching my head a little.
.
I imagine that for some readers this will be a brilliant read. For me, it was only okay. The translation by Katherine Silver was tightly controlled. Cristoff occasionally employs long, run-on sentences filled with verb after verb which could have seemed clumsy but Silver handles them well. These were among the flashes of good that I found among the opacity. Unfortunately not enough to pull this one above a 3 for me.
January 11, 2021
I read this book from Hoopla because it was included on the Tournament of Books longlist. The blurb says it's about silence.
To me, it's a bizarre combination of elements from previous/congruent Argentinian authors in the tournament - art museums, long confusing journeys (including a three-hour walk home every night? is that accurate?), and horses! Dead ones. Not only that but from the art perspective there are frequent insertions of long quotations from other sources.
Once I understood why the MC was there, I was more interested in her, but for a long time, really not so much. And it's like the interesting parts are all in the past.... I think I should have bailed but it's pretty quick, and the indie press that published Saudade, which I grew into liking. So who knows!
To me, it's a bizarre combination of elements from previous/congruent Argentinian authors in the tournament - art museums, long confusing journeys (including a three-hour walk home every night? is that accurate?), and horses! Dead ones. Not only that but from the art perspective there are frequent insertions of long quotations from other sources.
Once I understood why the MC was there, I was more interested in her, but for a long time, really not so much. And it's like the interesting parts are all in the past.... I think I should have bailed but it's pretty quick, and the indie press that published Saudade, which I grew into liking. So who knows!
July 10, 2025
What an interesting and strange little book. I was hoping for something quiet and meditative, but it wasn't that at all and probably all the better for it :D
"Now she finally understands those women who sweep the sidewalks in front of their houses every Sunday; their efforts are no longer unfathomable. There’s fury, anger, rage, furiously angry rage behind it. Mara moves her chair to sweep underneath, and over there also, between all the wheels on almost all the furniture in her museum room. As she sweeps she touches those pieces with her broom, raising dust, disobeying as she sweeps all the rules they explained to her the first day."
July 13, 2020
How likely is it that I would read two books about disaffected female museum guards in one year? And yet that's what's happened as I read this book and Indelicacy in April. Cristoff's book is a bit better than Cain's but both are terribly wan and laboured and lacking in some kind of deeper meaning or purpose. They are also honestly pretty damn boring.
I hereby declare that author's should call a moratorium on books about museum guards. At least, until they can find a decent plot to justify following those uniformed butts in official seats.
I hereby declare that author's should call a moratorium on books about museum guards. At least, until they can find a decent plot to justify following those uniformed butts in official seats.
October 14, 2020
Le pondría menos estrellas si tuviera la posibilidad de hacerlo y me alegro de no haber tenido las esperanzas tan altas con este título a pesar de que en la contraportada se la haya exaltado demasiado aun cuando la premisa dejó mucho que desear.
[spoilers a continuación]
Me gustó la idea de Mara de optar por el mudismo luego de un accidente -adrede- cuando interpretaba pero me decepcionó que no se indagara más en su vida anterior, ya que es aquello de lo que está escapando -porque la aqueja- y la lleva a empezar una nueva vida en un lugar diferente.
REZABA porque dejara de lado el tema de los caballos embalsamados por un rato y, como leí en una reseña de por aquí, que se enfocara más en los motivos personales de Mara por los cuales sabotea a los caballos, en lugar de haber sido por algo que se termina interpretando como un capricho; el de dejar que interrumpan su mutismo.
Las notas del cuaderno fueron lo que más me sacó de quicio. No hubio coherencia literaria entre digresión y digresión ni sentido de relación entre cita y cita. Lamentablemente, en lugar de usar estas estrategias, de seguir una cohesión narrativa y que aporten al relato de manera relevante, cayó en el snobismo de una autora que por haberse enfocado más en su esquema y de demostrarlo en todo momento de la historia perdió el interés del lector en las primeras páginas, y por obligación a terminarlo o darle una oportunidad finalizó por decepcionarlo.
Tampoco podía dejar de leerlo viendo a Mara como la típica "única y diferente" que considera al resto como imbéciles, por lo cual no me hizo empatizar ni con ella ni sus motivos. Ringo, en cambio, me simpatizó más y hasta sus motivos eran entendibles.
Para finalizar con la reseña, quisiera destacar que la autora falla en generar suspenso o intriga ya que termina explicando todo lo que ocurre por demás, volviendolo tautológico y hasta haciendo quedar como ignorante o "que no le da" (como leí en otra reseña) al lector porque de no explicarle, no entendería qué está pasando. Por lo tanto, sentí que esta historia fue como ir al cine con un amigo, pero tu amigo entra a la sala y vos te quedás en la puerta; podés escuchar todo lo que pasa adentro de la sala, escuchás las risas, los aplausos, todo, pero no podés entrar porque esperas a tu amigo que salga de la sala para que te cuente toda la pelicula.
[spoilers a continuación]
Me gustó la idea de Mara de optar por el mudismo luego de un accidente -adrede- cuando interpretaba pero me decepcionó que no se indagara más en su vida anterior, ya que es aquello de lo que está escapando -porque la aqueja- y la lleva a empezar una nueva vida en un lugar diferente.
REZABA porque dejara de lado el tema de los caballos embalsamados por un rato y, como leí en una reseña de por aquí, que se enfocara más en los motivos personales de Mara por los cuales sabotea a los caballos, en lugar de haber sido por algo que se termina interpretando como un capricho; el de dejar que interrumpan su mutismo.
Las notas del cuaderno fueron lo que más me sacó de quicio. No hubio coherencia literaria entre digresión y digresión ni sentido de relación entre cita y cita. Lamentablemente, en lugar de usar estas estrategias, de seguir una cohesión narrativa y que aporten al relato de manera relevante, cayó en el snobismo de una autora que por haberse enfocado más en su esquema y de demostrarlo en todo momento de la historia perdió el interés del lector en las primeras páginas, y por obligación a terminarlo o darle una oportunidad finalizó por decepcionarlo.
Tampoco podía dejar de leerlo viendo a Mara como la típica "única y diferente" que considera al resto como imbéciles, por lo cual no me hizo empatizar ni con ella ni sus motivos. Ringo, en cambio, me simpatizó más y hasta sus motivos eran entendibles.
Para finalizar con la reseña, quisiera destacar que la autora falla en generar suspenso o intriga ya que termina explicando todo lo que ocurre por demás, volviendolo tautológico y hasta haciendo quedar como ignorante o "que no le da" (como leí en otra reseña) al lector porque de no explicarle, no entendería qué está pasando. Por lo tanto, sentí que esta historia fue como ir al cine con un amigo, pero tu amigo entra a la sala y vos te quedás en la puerta; podés escuchar todo lo que pasa adentro de la sala, escuchás las risas, los aplausos, todo, pero no podés entrar porque esperas a tu amigo que salga de la sala para que te cuente toda la pelicula.
December 20, 2019
This is a strange little book. Not absurd or weird or anything like that, just strange in the characters and their motivations. I keep gnawing at it, getting things but not quite understanding. I don’t know if it’s just a foreign perspective that I don’t quite grasp or if this oddity is the whole point, but it’s fascinating regardless.
August 1, 2020
A mix of highly observant, clever writing and sections I just wanted to skim. But it was thought-provoking and I will try something else by this author.
January 19, 2020
Burnt out from her hectic and high stakes job as a conference interpreter, the protagonist decides to move to a small city in Argentina to work as a museum custodian and enjoy at least a year of peace and quiet. Limiting her talking and social interactions, she focuses on her simple and boring work, her garden and researching the town's history, reciting short book reviews of the texts she has read in this novel. But then, an opportunity for an important task threatens not only her own peace, but also the quietness of the town and the museum she chose to withdraw to. Determined to not have to deal with possible public attention and the buzz of many more tourists visiting, she is determined to ruin this town's chance of fame. It is an unusual novel in that the protagonist is resolute to be as boring as possible (and who would want to read about that) and when she does get interesting, she ruins other peoples' happiness for entirely selfish reasons (and who could emphasize with that). So it is not necessarily a funny or motivational book to read, but certainly an interesting idea.
Read
June 6, 2018En märklig historia som man antingen tycker mycket om eller... inte alls så mycket. Jag tillhör de sistnämnda. Förmodligen för att jag inte förstår mig på Mara. Ligger för långt ifrån min värld.
January 14, 2020
Here's my review in The Woven Tale Press:
Include Me Out by María Sonia Cristoff (January Woven Tale Press)
https://www.thewoventalepress.net/202...
Include Me Out by María Sonia Cristoff (January Woven Tale Press)
https://www.thewoventalepress.net/202...
April 4, 2017
Siamo fuori
(Fines de marzo)
Yo: ¿Esta novela me va a gustar?
Esposa: No me acuerdo nada (la había leído en enero)
La compré en la última Feria del Libro porque el título me pareció (me parece) insuperable. Es una novelita corta, 170 páginas; formato corto y letra grandes; se lee en dos días de subte de punta a punta. Pero la verdad es que iba por el primer tercio y ya me estaba embolando mal. No quise abandonarla, nunca abandono libros; menos si son así cortitos.
Es la historia de una mina que, sin explicar bien del todo por qué, después de boicotear su laburo, decide irse de la gran ciudad para laburar en el museo de un pueblo (bah, la ciudad de Luján) haciendo una especia de voto de silencio sin la monjeridad.
Tiene tres o cuatro escenitas muy buenas, que sospecho que recordaré por un tiempo (más que mi esposa, espero). Venía como para una estrellita pero al final levanta un poco. En fin, inclúyanse si quieren.
(Fines de marzo)
Yo: ¿Esta novela me va a gustar?
Esposa: No me acuerdo nada (la había leído en enero)
La compré en la última Feria del Libro porque el título me pareció (me parece) insuperable. Es una novelita corta, 170 páginas; formato corto y letra grandes; se lee en dos días de subte de punta a punta. Pero la verdad es que iba por el primer tercio y ya me estaba embolando mal. No quise abandonarla, nunca abandono libros; menos si son así cortitos.
Es la historia de una mina que, sin explicar bien del todo por qué, después de boicotear su laburo, decide irse de la gran ciudad para laburar en el museo de un pueblo (bah, la ciudad de Luján) haciendo una especia de voto de silencio sin la monjeridad.
Tiene tres o cuatro escenitas muy buenas, que sospecho que recordaré por un tiempo (más que mi esposa, espero). Venía como para una estrellita pero al final levanta un poco. En fin, inclúyanse si quieren.
October 13, 2020
Escoger el nombre de una novela debe ser tan importante como la historia o sus personajes. Y eso me llevo a escoger ésta novela cuyo nombre está muy bien escogido. Inclúyanme afuera refleja algo que quiere ser pero no es posible que sea. Así es este libro. Algo que no llega a ser. Solo es memorable su nombre y unas 10 frases más a lo largo de sus páginas. Por lo demás, la historia que podía ser muy llamativa - el experimento de aislarse en un pueblo, callar y no preguntar, por un año al que se somete voluntariamente una traductora- resultó ser aburrida y eterna a pesar de lo corta que es. Hay libros en los que “no pasa nada” pero la construcción de cada personaje y sus emociones es tan fuerte que uno siente que pasa de todo que uno vive la vida del personaje con sus angustias y sus sueños y sus dolores. En este libro no pasa nada ni en la historia ni en los personajes. No sienten nada. No transmiten nada. O nada que valga la pena resaltar, para mi gusto.
October 14, 2022
“(…) porque ningún combate válido se puede dar siendo cómplice de una acción aislada que, en definitiva, no es más que una expresión de decadencia, una enfermedad infantil”.
-María Sonia Cristoff en ‘Inclúyanme afuera’, una novela con complots/atentados en museos y su trasfondo, la cual recomiendo mucho.
-María Sonia Cristoff en ‘Inclúyanme afuera’, una novela con complots/atentados en museos y su trasfondo, la cual recomiendo mucho.
January 20, 2021
What a strange little book. Many questions, few answers. Entirely compelling. Read very dream-like but with the protagonist as a solid hub around which very little happens. Not a critique but information. It was a good winter read, strangely, for as warm as the weather was inside the story.
Read
February 18, 2020Mara is a simultaneous interpreter who has had enough of talking. She moves to a small Argentinian town to start a new life and takes a job as a museum guard. All she wants is to quietly observe the world and follow the ten rules of silence in her manual of rhetoric. But then she gets involved in an embalming project for the museum and is drawn out of her solitude. Her attempts to stay true to her desires take her into some increasingly bizarre situations. Interspersed throughout this story are sections from a notebook that look at history, travel accounts, the evolutionary development of local animals, and more. Mara is a fascinating character: single-minded, determined, unconventional. Include Me Out is genre-bending and delightfully strange, with one of the most memorable protagonists in recent fiction.
https://bookriot.com/2020/02/07/febru...
https://bookriot.com/2020/02/07/febru...
January 21, 2022
I found the narrator fascinating, and the way her backstory comes in drips and dribbles helped to keep me engaged until the plot actually took off about halfway through the book. The simmering rage that she tries to cope with by very intentionally practicing detachment is part mystery--the specifics of her story--and part universal experience for women. Reading the book was almost meditative, though I can't claim to understand everything the narrator refers to because I'm not familiar with Argentinian history or culture, but her description of her former career--simultaneous interpreting--really captured my imagination. If it had been a longer book, it probably would have been hard to stick with, but it was just the right length.
September 8, 2021
Honestamente creo que se quiso contar una historia simple de manera complicada, innecesariamente. La trama podría haberse desarrollado de otra forma y le hubiera dado mínimo dos estrellas más, porque de hecho me llamaba la atención, por más que me lo hayan dado para leer en la facultad. Menos de 200 páginas que se me hicieron súper pesadas. Falta de explicaciones en cuanto a una decisión súper importante que toma la protagonista. Realmente no lo recomiendo para nada.
March 15, 2021
La novela me sorprendió gratamente a medida que avanzo la trama. Inicialmente me disgusto su inicio en primera persona, un poco lastimero, muy descriptivo que no sabia hacia donde iba, pero después del tercer capitulo el complot que se fraguaba se adueño de mi ,quería seguir leyendo. Mara la protagonista es una traductora que se coloca una meta: "no hablar durante un año", para lo cual oculta su vida a los cercanos mientras se interna en un pueblo donde no la conocen de nada, consigue un trabajo en el museo mientras se dedica a seguir su libro de retorica( que es como su biblia del silencio, claramente inventado por ella), el cual tiene normas y tips para socializar lo menos posible. Toda esta historia llega a su climax cuando la loca crea un plan para sabotear la exposición mas importante del museo donde labura , a partir de ese momento todos los actos son divertidísimos , claro está, si usted como lector puede entender que la chica hace todo lo posible por lograr su objetivo : mantener su ansiado silencio durante un año. ¡Gran proesa!
May 19, 2019
Gillar idén, en udda karaktär som utför ett socialt experiment, "att förbli oberörd" efter att något i hennes arbetsvardag gått åt pipsvängen. Ett slags break med verkligheten. Som väntat går det dock inte så bra, och - mer oväntat, visar sig boken handla om motstånd. Ett rent personligt motstånd, anarki, sabotage. Det gillar jag! Och hur hon förhåller sig såpass "kylig" och distanserad genom allt, medan man gör sig en föreställning om de bakomliggande orsakerna. Inte världens mest spännande läsning, but it grows on you. Gillar även greppet med anteckningsboken, som både kan läsas som författarens anteckningsbok och huvudpersonens, inför och om det som sker i boken. Vet också oundvikligt mer om konservering av döda djur än jag någonsin velat veta. Det sätt och vis också ett plus.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 16, 2021
A story about a woman in Argentina who, after she unleashed an expose at her former job as an interpreter, relocates to a small town and attempts to be as silent and as uninvolved as she can in the life around her. She takes a job as a security guard at a local museum, but focuses on sitting well, and on the 10 different kinds of silence she has written down in her manual of rhetoric. Events conspire against her though, when she is promoted to assist a taxidermist in the restoration of two celebrated horses the museum is displaying, and she falls back into efforts to wreak vengeance on the overly verbose taxidermist. It is an interesting treatise on the possibility of silence and on the desire to remove oneself from the ins and outs of life.
March 16, 2022
Not a lot happens in this short book from Maria Cristoff, which reflects the atmosphere in the museum that is the setting.
Mara is a type of security officer in the museum, sitting on her chair in large rooms contemplating the displays, and remaining silent. For her, we learn, it is a type of penance for a professional error she made in her previous job as an interpreter.
The story is interspersed with excerpted passages from literary and historical sources that Mara has copied into her notebook during her hours of vigilance.
For one year Mara's atonement will be this, to speak the absolute minimum, and, under no circumstances, to ever ask questions.
Its a curious piece of writing, not least in how it appeals and entertains when it really feels like it shouldn't.
Mara is a type of security officer in the museum, sitting on her chair in large rooms contemplating the displays, and remaining silent. For her, we learn, it is a type of penance for a professional error she made in her previous job as an interpreter.
The story is interspersed with excerpted passages from literary and historical sources that Mara has copied into her notebook during her hours of vigilance.
For one year Mara's atonement will be this, to speak the absolute minimum, and, under no circumstances, to ever ask questions.
Its a curious piece of writing, not least in how it appeals and entertains when it really feels like it shouldn't.
December 13, 2020
The right book at the wrong time. I was bowled over earlier this year by False Calm but bounced off this a little bit. Maybe I should have started off this review with a spiel about the strange and difficult year that's coming to an end. I certainly didn't have the intellectual energy to tackle this book to my satisfaction.
Cristoff looks at the female voice and silence via an interpreter who has escaped her like to work in a small town museum. It's beautifully written and impeccably translated but I struggled with it. 3 stars for what I got out of it but I suspect it's a better book than that. Maybe another time.
Cristoff looks at the female voice and silence via an interpreter who has escaped her like to work in a small town museum. It's beautifully written and impeccably translated but I struggled with it. 3 stars for what I got out of it but I suspect it's a better book than that. Maybe another time.
January 3, 2021
A translator goes to a remote town to spend a year speaking as little as possible. She has a set of rules and routines to help her meet this goal, like her job as a museum guard and her project of reading from and following a manual of rhetoric and a very old gardening book. I think she also keeps a notebook. Then she is assigned by her museum bosses to be the assistant to a taxidermist who is restoring two very important horses. After that I can't reveal what she does--- what I can say is that I don't know if I've ever read a book that feels quite like this. The things she does are very strange, but I'm so interested in the things she thinks that she carries me along into her strangeness.
May 22, 2020
Read the translated version and found it to be difficult to follow at first but once you get past the beginning it picks up and at the end it’s a sort of maniacal ending. Really resonated with Mara’s desire to escape her job and just live in silence and then balked at her sudden evil plan for revenge—although I understood entirely how much it meant to her to follow through with her experiment. An interesting take on the daily struggle for purpose.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 12, 2021
An odd book, sort of a celebration and condemnation of the singular, independent revolutionary act. If it’s not embedded in a system of meaning, can it be understood? If it doesn’t make sense, how can it make a difference? How does silence serve and undermine action?
Many of the interspersed “notebook” sections didn’t add much to the reading for me, though perhaps that disconnected meaninglessness is simply another layer to the critique.
Many of the interspersed “notebook” sections didn’t add much to the reading for me, though perhaps that disconnected meaninglessness is simply another layer to the critique.
January 28, 2021
I did not enjoy this book. The description mentions Mara losing her grip on sanity and it does seem like that, both the act that leads her away from her prior life and into her experiment with silence, and the plotting of a pointless and destructive act that is the bulk of the book, were the acts of a person losing their grip. But "this woman is losing her marbles" doesn't really seem like a plot to me, and didn't seem to serve another purpose.
November 1, 2025
A strange, short book that never did enough with the central idea of silence to make it seem anything more than an oddity to fill pages. Wasted potential. The rest of the book has interesting facts and fictions interspersed with the loose, rather uninspiring narrative. The writing is concise and clean, almost more informational than prose-seeming. Nothing too exciting, not weird enough, funny enough, or descriptive enough to do more than simply read through to the end.
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