Status Updates From Même les morts

this started out strong but got old fast - repetitive and i hated the attempted commentary on the atomic bomb (?) and trump at the end. to me the difference between this & enrigue (who i originally compared it to) is enrigue's historical fiction is explicitly satirical & this took itself way too seriously yet had nothing interesting to say. oh colonialism affected the growth of capitalism & the world today? well yeah

i was really enjoying this at first but i think it's like 30% too long and should have been a novella. it's also starting to grate on me a little bit in the same way that valeria luiselli's lost children archive did? in the like. way of approaching immigration & especially immigration to the us via the mexican border through like, a poeticized narrative in a way that just feels weirddddd

“what if you were a spanish colonizer and then you time traveled and you saw a train” i mean sure what if … this book is kind of silly

i love the narration and i love pseudo-historical fiction… yas… very much in the style of álvaro enrigue & particularly like you dreamed of empires in terms of content