The Monroe Girls

by Antoine Volodine, Alyson Waters (Translator)

For readers of Thomas Pynchon, a conspiratorial adventure through a bleak future where the dead (and their political factions) never really die, from one of France’s most visionary writers

Breton has seen brighter days. Now his body sags as he pulls a pair of binoculars to his withered face. He peers from the grimy window of a near-empty psychiatric compound—one of the last buildings standing after an unspecified disaster—spying rue Dellwo below, dreary in perpetual rain. Into this world of devastation drop the Monroe girls—paramilitaries trained in the “dark place” by Monroe, a dissident executed long ago. Their mission to revamp the Party is futile in this bleak, decaying world. Breton, our schizophrenic narrator, is tasked (and tortured) by what remains of the Party to locate and identify the Monroe girls using special optical equipment and his powers of extrasensory perception. Breton’s journey through a bardo-like, hostile labyrinth invites us into a sensual swirl of bodily decay, political acquiescence, and civilizational collapse. In this derelict setting, Volodine ruminates on identity, surveillance, life after death, and love (which, alas, does not conquer all). An urgent and blistering tale, beautifully rendered with Volodine’s distinct pathos and humor.

Genres: Fiction, Dystopia, Apocalyptic, France

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Antoine Volodine is the primary pseudonym of a French author. Some of his books have been published in sf collections, but his style, which he has called "post-exoticism", does not fit neatly into any common genre.

He publishes under several additional pseudonyms, including Lutz Bassmann and Manuela Draeger.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶]

Are the dead grouchier than the living? It would seem so, based on this authoritative text. What we have here are more of Volodine's bardo hijinks, wherein everyone is more or less resigned to the futility of their actions but still plod on in true Beckettian fashion. Some characters are 'alive' and some are 'dead', but in the end it doesn't really matter much which state you're in. Reason being that sh*t's gone post-apocalyptic, and the only remaining island of humanity is housed within a sprawling psychiatric facility. Volodine's bleak humor is smeared all over these pages, but collectively it's all depressing as hell, and I should have read it more quickly than I did. (3.5)

[Jonfaith]

Imagine a post-Trotskyite devastation where some time after the collapse of the Second Soviet Union (and the attendant radiation) and inside a dilapidated psyche ward is a Pet Sematary where instead of the beloved returning from the grave it is commissars and thugs embroiled in eternal factional disputes. The titular ladies resemble La Femme Nikita but saddled with the revolutionary zeal of Ulrike Meinhof. Did I mention the damp? Everything smells . . . unpleasant. There's a Blade Runner rain throughout as the paths from the Bardo are well-worn from the traffic.

I didn't care much for this for the first 150 pages, a segment where the schizophrenia and shamanism anchor the narrative in a sort of darkened torpor. Matters then coalesce into gallows humor and a bit of a quest, the results of which are to be expected. It is Volodine so it is grim. This one appeared shorn of literary debris and focused instead on the mutable divisions within the Party and the resulting ideological antipathy.

[Paul Dembina]

I just can't get enough of Volodine's (and his heteronyms) post-exotic shtick

[Paolo]

Qui battiamo la fiacca, Voloduzzo caro.
O forse il problema è che hai provato a fare qualcosa di meno sperimentale che, omg, era quasi lineare? Però ti voglio bene lo stesso.

[Curtis]

A man and his schizophrenic alter ego get tasked by a Pynchonian shadowy government organization to infiltrate the afterlife. Fans of Michael Cisco (especially The Tyrant) should find a lot to love here.

[Regan]

Full review on the Asymptote Journal blog! https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...

"It’s Volodine’s assured merging of disparate modes and genres—the ludicrous caper, gritty noir, political action-adventure, fatalistic dystopia—that enables this bleak and sardonic fable to showcase the sheer absurdity of authoritarian control, as well as the desperation that occurs on the precipice of its collapse."

[Ian, etc.]

Damp, mildewy little novel. Feels a little like that old childhood game meant to give you shivers — x marks the spot, spiders running down your back, tight squeeze, cool breeze. Something unwanted crawling on your skin.

Pynchon is ambitious. Maybe Kafka lightly? Phillip K. Dick? *Disco Elysium*? Heavy fog, grimy politics of death. A screen that’s hard to penetrate. Characters with no real presence, plot outlined in faint whispers. And yet, impressively readable for a book that feels, for all intents and purposes, like a corpse. Never so much momentum to an autopsy, but from where? Nuclear fission, maybe, the atomic splitting of identities. The death within us, the life within us. The warring factions of the Party battling within our psyche. Two opposing elements splitting us down the middle. Fission. And so it goes.

[Daniele]

Avevo letto diverse recensioni così così, ma ammetto che a me in realtà è piaciuto.

Cupo, buio, umido, puzzolente, per me è un romanzo anche molto attuale, il disfacimento del Partito potrebbe esser rapportato alla nostra società odierna, una miriade di sotto partiti in guerra e che tramano gli uni contro gli altri.

Certo il finale è senza speranza, ma d'altronde non è che il mondo stia andando verso la strada giusta ...

Desolante l'evidenza della fine collettiva. Desolante la cecità delle alte sfere del Partito che, contro ogni logica, contavano ancora sul fatto di poter mobilitare le masse per assicurare all'umanità migliori condizioni di sopravvivenza.
Desolante e idiota l'idea che nulla fosse andato definitivamente perso, che nulla fosse spacciato, che fosse normale per la polizia continuare a onorare compiti di ordine pubblico e di difesa della speranza.

Rimasero uno di fronte all'altra senza dir nulla, per un bel pezzo, come in certi film taiwanesi disastrosamente influenzati dall'estetica francese, o come in uno zaconto post-esotico prima di una scena di violenza criminale.

Io ti guardo. Tu sorridi. Mi sorridi. Il tuo viso è raggiante, a volte sostenevi di avere antenati yburi o buriati, il tuo viso ne è il riflesso ed è molto giovane, molto duro e sublime, e mi sorridi. Ammiro di nuovo in te la forma perfetta delle labbra, delle sopracciglia, degli zigomi. Ancora una volta mi immergo nelle profondità dei tuoi occhi color miele scuro, cosparsi di pagliuzze dorate. Ti dico che vorrei tanto svanire, perdutamente, in te, cerco le parole giuste, follemente, insensatamente, e tu mi rispondi allargando ancora il tuo sorriso. In quel momento sembra a entrambi di aver di fronte l'eternità.

[Jesse]

Recently translated, as I was not reading this in Italian. Sadly.
Apparently Volodine, who seems himself to be one of those Pessoa-type modernist experimenters toting multiple pseudonyms, has written a bunch of these novels, which remind me a lot of classic French Structuralist romans noir/nouveaux romans--Robbe-Grillet, Echenoz, Pennac--in that there's odd, offbeat structural play (in the first section, we revisit and restart scenes multiple times in consecutive chapters), characters who share a name but seem to be distinct personae (or just, according to reviews, a single schizophrenic narrator), a sorta mystery about women being sent from beyond death to end the Party, which seems to be some post-apocalyptic remnant of Soviet communism, long slumped into decrepitude and venality. There are whole sections narrated by dead people, or at least attempted to be, since they don't remember everything anymore. It's elliptical, cynical, and also somehow puckishly satirical about the lingering possibility of some real socialist utopia. Hard to tell, really--larger project seems to be exploring how many of these remnants of 20th-c practices and ideals might remain far in the future and how many would become absurdities, or should become absurdities.

I enjoyed it, in that slightly theoretical way I often do with works like these, but I'm not sure I'd read another of these.

[Federico Napolitano]

Vi consiglio caldamente di leggere le ultime 10 pagine pensando ad ipotetici nomi per collettivi musicali. No, non venite a ringraziarmi.

[Samurai Banana]

a volodine novel is always an incredible experience, a painful yet beautiful journey through dreams, and this one does not disappoint. though unlike most of his books it didn't make me cry, it still hit hard and left me emotionally raw. it's a very lonely book that grapples with loss of all kinds - lost loves, futures, and hopes. there is a heavy sense of resignation here, but still a need to move forward to the bitter end, even if nothing awaits. throughout, the writing is immensely gorgeous. volodine's descriptive language, as always, is second to none, making this distant, fading future feel so real, even if you can't be sure whether it's reality, a dream, or the bardo. it's maybe not the best entry point for his world of failed revolutionaries, but it continues it well. though the narrative ends on a fairly sad note (don't they all?) this one fully concludes with a list of revolutionary factions several pages long, and makes you laugh even if you know they ultimately all fell apart.

[gallizio]

Once were will be fascists

[Hailey]

i still dont know what happened or the significance or anything that did? from the blurb and title alone i was intrigued--what is a monroe girl, where does she come from, what does she do, what will she do--but by the end i felt unsatisfied . i didnt feel like i knew any of the characters , it all felt very screenplay-y in a bad way. but maybe the actual context/world building was not the authors point when writing this book. but why then have such an intriguing title and (beautiful) cover art! i wish he gave us more about the girls rather than watever.. or not even the girls but like. some actual drama. rather than 200something pages of people walking in rain and dirty buildings and dozens of different ways of calling the same woman fat (probably the most annoying thing about this book and im not even a feminist) but maybe thats some peoples vibe i guess. im happy for those who enjoyed this book i wish i had been one of them...

[La Hyène]

Premetto di non aver letto "Terminus radioso" il libro che viene considerato da molti l'opera più completa di Antoine Valodine e quindi le considerazioni che sto per fare potrebbero essere parziali. Ho deciso di leggere questo libro, dopo aver visto Valodine a @lagrandelibrairie ed essere stata colpita dall'aspetto da vecchio bolscevico di questo scrittore francese. Mi ha particolarmente incuriosito il suo sussultare sulla sedia, facendo riferimento ad un ipotetico spoiler, quando il povero @atrapenard, conduttore della trasmissione, non stava facendo altro che dipanare le fila della trama del libro, alquanto complessa e difficile da narrare. Ma d'altro canto da uno scrittore che ha inventato un genere letterario chiamato "letteratura post-esotista", allontanandosi dalla fantascienza e dando forma ad uno stile tutto suo, non ci si poteva che aspettare un piglio deciso. "Les filles de Monroe" è un libro interessante, a volte ironico, inclusivo, dove i personaggi hanno sempre qualcosa di originale. Breton è schizofrenico, Dame Patmos pur essendo obesa, si muove come una bomba sexy, Rebecca Rausch viene dall'aldilà ed è anche particolarmente brusca e despotica. Ma poi ci sono tutti gli altri particolari che rendono il libro veramente originale, in un'epoca storica in cui siamo portati a leggere romanzi con delle storie trite e ritrite, incapaci di incollare il lettore alla pagina, come i nomi dei settori nei quali è divisa la città, i nomi delle fazioni dei partiti, le descrizioni dei personaggi e non ultima la morale del libro stesso. Che dire, a breve leggerò "Terminus radioso" e sarò in prima fila quando Valodine verrà al Salone del libro di Torino, sempre che il programma del salone non cambi altre duecento volte prima della partenza! Speriamo bene!

[Thatorchia]

Si tratta di un'opera sperimentale e originale, che mescola narrazione e saggistica, realtà e immaginazione, cronaca e poesia. Il romanzo è ambientato in un mondo post-apocalittico, dove l'umanità residua popola un immenso ospedale psichiatrico, e dove un ex dissidente politico, Monroe, organizza dall'aldilà un commando di terroriste per sovvertire l'ordine costituito. Le ragazze Monroe sono delle giovani combattenti che tornano dal mondo dei morti per portare avanti la rivolta, ma sono braccate dalla polizia e dai servizi segreti, che cercano di infiltrarsi nel mondo dei morti per eliminarle. Il protagonista è Breton, un paziente psichiatrico dotato di poteri medianici, che viene incaricato dal partito di entrare in contatto con le ragazze Monroe e di fermarle. Il romanzo è una provocazione scioccante e disturbante, che mette in scena una visione distorta e perversa della realtà contemporanea, dominata dalla tecnologia, dalla violenza, dalla droga e dal sesso.
Le ragazze Monroe è sorprendente e stimolante, che offre una visione originale e critica del mondo contemporaneo. L'autore dimostra una grande abilità nel creare storie avvincenti e originali, nel dosare il ritmo e il suspense, nel mescolare il comico e il tragico.

[Tom]

Antoine Volodine’s novels take place in an amorphous, dreamlike setting two hundred years or so in the future, a post-apocalyptic future with strange contours, a setting Volodine calls “post-exotic.” In The Monroe Girls—whose eternally dark and rainy weather seems straight from the set of Blade Runner—the narration alternates between a hospital inmate’s first-person narration and an omniscient narration following a government agent.

The hospital inmate, a man named Breton, is as unreliable an unreliable narrator as one could hope for. Or perhaps his presumed unreliability encourages readers either to doubt him or to imagine circumstances in which everything he reports is literally true because he is schizophrenic.

The government agent, Kaytel, is assigned to interrogate and torture Breton who is one of few people who, because of whatever chemical or nuclear warfare may once have occurred, developed the ability to read the thoughts of the dead. For months now, when the novel begins, Breton has been drugged and attached to high-tech gizmos that allow him to see different parts of the city the sanitarium is in, Baltimore(!).

In this grim setting, Breton has been asked to keep monitor a group of dead women sneaking into the world of the living, to create political havoc.

At this point, I’ll make a general observation: Rigid ideologies, secular and religious, tend to be eternally on two war fronts: the external enemies and the enemies within. In The Monroe Girls, the struggle has ceased to be against outside enemies; history has contracted until ideology survives chiefly by purging its own adherents. In this dystopian dream future, the battle is down to exterminating the enemies within, even if that means bringing back the dead to help do it.

What is the goal? To return to some imaginary True Path. The program specifics are never laid out. “The party comes first” is a confession of eternal faith. For me, the level of intolerance and intransigence towards others, as suggested by these Party members and defectors, amounts to very black comedy, although not a knee-slapper. Almost no one is untouched by duplicity, denial, and betrayal—either at the hands of others or as survival mechanisms for themselves.

In this post-apocalyptic world, whose population is rapidly dwindling, only members of the Party, the police, and people hospitalized for various reasons are left behind. And the battle to return the Party to its true path must go on.

Alyson Waters’ translation of this dreamworld into idiomatic English is spot on and natural-sounding.

For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...

[Darryl]

Antoine Volodine describes his works as "post-exotic," which feature characters of failed revolutions who are imprisoned in post-apocalyptic settings. The main character in The Monroe Girls is Breton, a schizophrenic middle aged man whose lifelong companion is Breton, who he frequently disagrees with. He is housed in a decrepit psychiatric ward by members of the Central Committee, the last remnants of the Party that remain after an apocalypse that wiped out nearly all of civilization roughly 100 years in the past. The Central Committee is aware that Breton has certain telepathic and cosmonautic(?) powers that allows him to communicate with the Monroe Girls, young women under the control of the shadowy but powerful figure Monroe who are reborn, leap from ledges of tall building and attempt to integrate as psychiatric patients in order to begin the process of taking over the Party and wresting control from the Central Committee.

The Central Committee, fully aware that Breton is not cooperating with them, tortures him in an attempt to get him to reveal the whereabouts of Monroe and Rebecca Rausch, one of the first Monroe Girls, who Breton was madly in love with 30 years previously. The novel introduces a variety of bizarre characters, living, dead and otherwise, and it wasn't until the very end that I had somewhat of an understanding of what the plot of this very strange novel was, although the ending was abrupt and very confusing.

I've read several dozen Archipelago books, but this was the first one that I didn't like and was sorry that I read; it was only 232 pages in length, which encouraged me to plow through it. It took me nearly two weeks to finish it, as I could only concentrate on it for short stretches. I don't know if this book fits in the category of science fiction or not, so I'm willing to concede that fans of that genre may get much more out of this book than I did. Given my new rating scale I'll give it 2 stars, as it wasn't a badly written book, just one I didn't enjoy.

[Lordof Nothing]

La scrittura di Antoine Volondine è così, ti affoga dentro un incubo poco a poco fino a farti sentire come un prigioniero in una cella, la cella dell’esistenza.
Le ragazze di Monroe, guerrigliere che vengono alla luce nel mondo dei vivi dal mondo dei morti calandosi dal cornicione di una finestra, è un mondo prigione costruito ai confini di un ospedale psichiatrico, dove si occupano celle, stanze, cantine, armadi e ci sono solo porte, finestre serrande, gabbiotti, strade senza via d’uscita.
Tutto è doppio e si moltiplica fino a tornare a combaciare (Il partito, la polizia, la rivolta).
Sembrano tutti vivi e poi sono tutti morti e forse ancora vivi.
Dove sei capitato?
In un mondo post apocalittico? In un semplice ospedale psichiatrico? Dentro la testa sognante di uno dei doppi di Breton? Dentro il vaneggiamento di Monroe? Dentro la mente di uno schizofrenico?

Una notte senza fine che avanza accompagnata dallo scroscio perseverante della pioggia, inducendo ad una perdita e dispersione d’identità tale da assottigliare il confine tra sogno e incubo, tra vita e morte. Una notte che rende l’aria una sostanza appiccicosa che si attacca e si riversa con violenza sulla pelle dei pochi personaggi (superstiti o invenzioni) a cui resta solo tanta stanchezza fisica e mentale.
Tutto si frantuma, degrada, sfiorisce. La rivolta, la morte, gli intenti, le pulsioni, le stesse ragazze Monroe “simili a enormi insetti sfatti e insozzati da malattie non umane e da semisfere puntute”. Lo stesso Partito è frazionato, precisamente in 343 correnti fino all’annullamento totale.

Le ragazze Monroe è l’incubo di un defunto, i primi giorni confusi nel Bardo, le sue prime angosciose avventure. Come vivere dentro una coscienza persa in stati nebulosi e scuri. Volodine sembra voler ricordare che in fondo l’umanità è una categoria sconosciuta, i cui contorni sono sfumati e la cui importanza centrale nell’universo non è evidente.

[JA]

4.5 Stars

First, some context: Antoine Volodine is a pseudonym for a French author who writes what he has termed "post-exotic novels" under various heteronyms. These novels are set in a post-apocalyptic future, and characters in some books also "write" other novels that are part of the post-exotic corpus. (I wonder how much he was influenced by Fernando Pessoa?)

I've only read two novels associated with Volodine: In the Time of the Blue Ball by Manuela Draeger, a collection of odd, fantastical, dream-like short stories that I enjoyed very much, and The Monroe Girls, so if any of the above details about post-exoticism are off, feel free to correct me. I'm far from an expert.

The Monroe Girls is very different from In the Time of the Blue Ball, both stylistically and thematically. I am usually loath to judge a book by its cover, but in this case the strange, evocative artwork reflects the tone of the novel quite well.

I find the cover intriguing and slightly unsettling, with an oblique, almost narrative quality. The world in the painting seems fully realized yet inscrutable. It's skillfully done and, though it's not beautiful in a traditional sense, there are some restrained, beautiful uses of color. I had a very similar experience reading the novel itself.

I won't say much about the plot. I went in blind, aside from the basic background to Volodine's project. This novel will likely appeal to a narrow audience, but for those interested, I suggest you go in blind, too.

As soon as I finished, I explored what post-exotic novel I will read next. Radiant Terminus seems to be a central text, but I'm more inclined toward something offbeat, similar to In the Time of the Blue Ball and The Monroe Girls. I will likely read Volodine's Minor Angels.

[ritareadthat]

4.25⭐
A recipe for a highly successful literary dystopian novel... 
 
I could do a boring book review today. But I didn't feel like it. So there's this... 
 
𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐀'𝐒 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐈𝐏𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐑: 
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐑𝐎𝐄 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋𝐒 
𝘣𝘺 𝘈𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘝𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘦, 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘩 𝘣𝘺 𝘈𝘭𝘺𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘞𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 
(𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬, 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘥𝘢𝘺!) 
 
A whole cup of Fight Club 
Two cups of Twelve Monkeys 
A healthy dollop of Kurt Vonnegut 
A generous handful of Orwellian politics 
Just a dash each of The Walking Dead and The Hunger Games 
And a light garnish of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 
 
Please combine all ingredients thoroughly and serve with an open mind and good sense of humor. 
 
I felt this recipe formulating in my mind as I was reading. There was a multitude of fascinating dystopian/psychological elements to it that reminded me of bits and pieces of other books I have read or visuals witnessed on the screen—yet 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘳𝘰𝘦 𝘎𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘴 is wholly unique. I have loved dystopian/apocalyptic fiction for ove half of my life—just this past year alone I read some real bangers: I Who Have Never Known Men, Chain-Gang All-Stars, The Wall, Memory Police, Tender Is The Flesh, and Alas, Babylon. But it's been a few months and I was starting to get the itch; I was due for another. And just look, here we are, wish granted. 
 
If you like a literary apocalypse/post-apocalyptic with equal parts grit, humor, surrealism, and poetic prose, read it. I loved the world that was built and was saddened when I found myself on the last page. I wanted more of it! What a successfully quirky meal this was! 
 
If you enjoyed this recipe, please let me know in the comments! (Kind words help my dopamine and serotonin levels, which are chronically low.) 
 
I found it utterly delicious. 
 
Many thanks to Archipelago Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!






3/12/26
So vivid and detailed and extraordinarily well done world building mixed with humor and poetic prose. what a combination. upon completion I give it this rating only because I wanted more of everything in this book! but, I think it ended perfectly. I'll have some more thoughts here in the next few days and my rating may increase!

[Ryan Diederich]

Psychic links, time slips, schizophrenia, living-dead barriers— the dead are marked by their obscenity more than anything. It’s all marked up with absurd hopelessness. Think of it like Beckett’s Endgame if it took place across an entire city post collapse.

The prose is full of that noirish terseness. So much of the action is stunted in before/after vignettes. For example, we don’t see the narrator and Rebecca Rausch escape the Malakassian Ward, we just begin the next section with a brief “Evening came. Our escape had been a success.” And it’s not a loss, just an expedience. High concepts zip along thru the story.

More than anything Volodine builds up this musty grimdark tone — think of the “powerful odor of devastation.” Think of the final part of Gravity’s Rainbow after Slothrop’s disintegration at the crossroads, or Roadside Picnic, but full of the undead who are unbothered about it in the way they are in movies like Shatter Dead or Cemetery Man.

The most Pynchonian aspects are the outfit changes, and maybe the extended moment of a ghost carrying around a jar of pickles — tho Volodine reserves his goofy names for political factions. There’s one paragraph where he nails into the tremors of Pynchon’s prose (“I began to think about death”). The humor is total Beckett — look to the undead staircase dialogue between the elderly couple.

[Christopher Lucas]

So, to begin, I did not realize exactly what I was getting into with Volodine and his entire post-exotic body of work. Perhaps I should blame myself, or the disquieting cover art that beckoned me, or even the square dimensions that made this book pop off the shelves. Regardless of the reason, I feel like I dove into the deep end of a world I couldn't quite grapple with — both a pro and a con.

I began in that peculiar and wondrous state of semi-confusion where a world is sketched with rules and forms you don't quite recognize: death is ambiguous, scenes literally repeat themselves, figures are human or maybe dogs. The mood is palpably dark and wet, and curiosity drove me forward; a feeling I'd fall in love with this alluring, awful place.

I ended, sadly, in a bit of a tired state — holding scraps of a story that never quite developed into a concrete vision of the world. A few repetitious elements grew tiresome: endless rain, darkness, plane trees, vomit, f-bombs. Conversations meander and circle on themselves with few details to grasp, while noir-seeming characters lie and curse each other out, or may literally be each other. The confusion never yielded to much understanding, and I was driven to outside sources for clues about the wider world and what I was probably missing.

Ultimately, my time inside this novel was remarkable and distinct yet frustrating. Maybe this isn't the right starting point for post-exotic exploration, or maybe I had exactly the experience I was meant to. I might never know.

[Michele Giacomini]

Primo libro di Volodine che leggo a essere propriamente inquadrabile in un una combinazione di generi pre-stabilita e quindi un po' al di sotto degli standard sovversivi e allucinogeni a cui mi aveva abituato quest' autore. Una sorta di fantascienza post apocalittica con un incedere da noir metafisico, con sparuti riferimenti all'universo post-esotico e suggestioni che sembrano collocare la narrazione in un'ipotetica cronologia prima di Terminus Radioso, nel periodo in cui i concetti di vita e morte, politica e sogno, tempo e spazio stavano appena cominciando a perdere di significato.
Sicuramente da leggere, ma senza aspettarsi le conflagrazioni avanguardistiche di Terminus Radioso.

[Bobparr]

Mondi in disfacimento, trame oniriche e non-sense, ambienti che possono ricordare i film di Caro o lo Stalker piovoso di Tarkovskij - ma solo come idea. Innesti di Ionesco e di giornaletti fantascientifici stampati su carta riciclata.
Indeciso per molto tempo di abbandonarlo lì, ho fatto una specie di fioretto nel terminarlo velocemente, saltando ovviamente l’appendice dei 343 nomi delle fazioni del partito.
Libro che mi ricorda, nonostante tutto, la parola “dis-utile” e che mi lascia con una curiosità: qual è l’odore delle nidiate di ragni?

[Alessia]

Che bello leggere un libro e a primo acchito pensare: non ho capito una beneamata mazza! Scherzi a parte, Volodine ha un modo di scrivere poco lineare e che, come nella maggior parte dei distopici, ti fa venire voglia di sapere di più del contesto che ha portato il mondo nella situazione dipinta nel romanzo. La confusione che lascia è positiva, intrigante e correlata da personaggi molto interessanti che rendono il romanzo ottimo.

[Zoe Kovacs]

3.5 stars -- everything in this book smells bad. It's damp, it's rotting, it's fetid. Our narrator is barfing constantly and it's raining all the time. That said, the writing and use of perspective is intriguing and kind of delightful. I like books with short chapters and perspective shifts, so I dug reading this and it went by quickly. Ch 38 is gorgeous. It wasn't my fav ever, but I'd recommend it.

[Ambra • Sonosololibri]

Come si fa a darti 3 stelle Volodino, mannaggiatte, che ti si vuole sempre bene ma a questo giro mi sei sembrato un po' sottotono. Però meriti sempre, anche quando sei moscio. Facciamo tre-stelle-e-mezzo-quasi-quattro.

[Ines Mug]

L'univers et le style d'écriture sont très particuliers, malgré cela l'histoire est plutôt prenante !

[Giovanni Pepa]

un sogno febbrile. meno riuscito di altre occasioni

[Joyce]

Coal black