Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Moya's (Senselessness) lyrical meditation on memory and loss tells the story of Erasmo Aragon, an exiled journalist in Mexico City who suffers from ambiguous medical symptoms. Aragon visits an acupuncturist and holistic doctor named Don Chente, who prescribes hypnotherapy, with the side effect of producing vivid dreams. As the status quo of his life is disrupted, the narrator of this Bolañoesque novel dreams of leaving Mexico and returning to his native El Salvador. His plans to return, however, are repeatedly interrupted, and he finds himself twisted up in a state of fear and vulnerable paranoia. Further complications arise when the mysterious Don Chente himself flees to El Salvador without telling Aragon what he said while hypnotized. Yet Aragon's dream is worth the risk of retribution, because it is the dream of all exiles: the return to a new life in a familiar setting. Stories of political turmoil, communism, love affairs, friendships, and family drama weave in and out of Aragon's quest to escape his own "psychic mechanisms." In this taut, mesmerizing story of the brain's far-reaching functions, Moya once again proves to be a master storyteller. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Born in 1957 in Honduras to a Honduran mother and a Salvadoran father, Castellanos Moya has written nine novels (e.g., Senselessness) that typically reflect the political instability of Central America. Although the author rejects the label "political writer," Erasmo Aragon, his journalist protagonist here, has fled El Salvador for the relative safety of Mexico and is obsessed with politics. Erasmo's excruciating stomach pain brings him to consult Dr. Chente Alvarado, a fellow Salvadoran who proposes hypnosis to help him. Meanwhile, hoping to end his tempestuous relationship with Eva, Erasmo plans to leave Mexico to start a magazine back in San Salvador. When Dr. Chente himself returns to San Salvador for the funeral of his mother, Erasmo begins to doubt the wisdom of his decision, fearing that the leftist doctor might be attacked by goons at the airport or that he might betray the confidences from their sessions together to the authorities. Did the doctor really abandon his ideals when he married an oligarch, and did he really collaborate with the CIA in the Sixties? VERDICT Erasmo's ever-more-imaginative paranoic rants, along with the zany conviction that every shapely woman he sees has the unique ability to salve and soothe him, makes reading this novel a pure delight.-Jack Shreve, Chicago (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An exquisitely wry novel that builds on the infinite variations of anxiety as narrative force.A hypochondriac journalist living in Mexico visits a doctor for pain in his overwrought liver, and the history of a life is examined. He wants to return to El Salvador now that peace seems to be settling in, especially now that his wife has confessed to having an affair. The doctor is more of an alchemist, and the setting is surrealan elegant penthouse where women drink tea and play canasta. Don Chente is a doctor, acupuncturist, psychologist and homeopath in one; he asks personal questions that probe the journalist's intentions. Hypnosis opens memories, real or imagined, from the patient's childhoodof his father and of the murderous politics that sent him and his uncle Muecn into self-imposed exile in Mexico 11 years earlier. His dream of returning to his homeland is a self-inflated vision of the brave journalist reporting the sordid facts of the revolution when in reality the turmoil is about over. Mysteriously, Don Chente disappears, and the journalist is now driven by needs that include discovering what the doctor learned from him while he was under hypnosis. Paranoia creeps in as he envisions the doctor as a political informant. A drunken romp through Mexico City ensues, and when Erasmito, the journalist named only once in the novel, in a memory, passes through security at the airport, he sees his doctor passing him on his way back into Mexico. He erupts with anxiety; he is hopeless, helpless, and his life is a never-ending cycle of hypochondria, paranoia and the absurd. Moya has written a tight little novel that is wickedly witty and built on the idea of memory as a never-ending cause of inspiration and turmoil. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
