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ctiner7's review
3.0
What a beautiful story. Some was hard to read, I think it was because it was originally written in Spanish, but I loved the story nonetheless.
I won this book on Goodreads First Reads.
I won this book on Goodreads First Reads.
screen_memory's review
4.0
A return to Chejfec and his wandering narrators. This novel, like Chejfecs others, centers on the thoughts and memories of a perambulating narrator, although the duty of narration seems to be shared with (presumably) memory itself in certain scenes, denoted by italics. The prose seems melancholy as always - this is perhaps unavoidable when contending with memory, one of the most fragile, delicate, and at once both marvelous and tragic aspects of our existence - leaving one to imagine the perambulating narrator looking out at the sensory world and looking inward to the illusory reality of memories with a somber expression.
A somber expression quite deserved, since the cause for the narrator's wonderings centers on the disappearance of a friend, known as M, who was kidnapped amidst political turmoil in Buenos Aires, and who the narrator imagines dies in an explosion occurring early in the narrative. Distance figures heavily in the narrator's musings. It is distance which gives a journey its purpose. It is distance which makes the arrival worthwhile. It is distance which allows the images of one's past to flower from the soil of memory.
Distance and distance alone is the paramount condition for the very existence of the narrative: Without M's disappearance and supposed death - without the enigma of his absence; his distance from his friend like the unfathomable and immeasurable distance of one planet from another - there would be no occasion for the existence of the text.
"The truth is, there comes a time when the recovery of memories becomes a path riddled with obstacles." Our memories form a sort of narrative of our lives, and we make sense of our experience and piece each fragmentary memory of our life into the grand mosaic through stories, through retellings and recollections of moments long or recently past. It is with some despair that we might recognize these records as a sort of fiction since they are of doubtful authorship, and since their authenticity remains indisputably in question; since we cannot trust memory to serve as an objective record of experience. But we may enjoy our memories as a sort of lived fiction, each of them pieced together like pearls on a fraying string, or pieced across multiple lengths of thread like vignettes, like chapters of the life of a character bearing a name identical to our own. This is what I believe The Planets means to emphasize: A return to what has passed, a return to memory as an attempt to make sense of the chaos and indeterminacy of the present; an encounter with the fiction of a life lived and still living.
A somber expression quite deserved, since the cause for the narrator's wonderings centers on the disappearance of a friend, known as M, who was kidnapped amidst political turmoil in Buenos Aires, and who the narrator imagines dies in an explosion occurring early in the narrative. Distance figures heavily in the narrator's musings. It is distance which gives a journey its purpose. It is distance which makes the arrival worthwhile. It is distance which allows the images of one's past to flower from the soil of memory.
Distance and distance alone is the paramount condition for the very existence of the narrative: Without M's disappearance and supposed death - without the enigma of his absence; his distance from his friend like the unfathomable and immeasurable distance of one planet from another - there would be no occasion for the existence of the text.
"The truth is, there comes a time when the recovery of memories becomes a path riddled with obstacles." Our memories form a sort of narrative of our lives, and we make sense of our experience and piece each fragmentary memory of our life into the grand mosaic through stories, through retellings and recollections of moments long or recently past. It is with some despair that we might recognize these records as a sort of fiction since they are of doubtful authorship, and since their authenticity remains indisputably in question; since we cannot trust memory to serve as an objective record of experience. But we may enjoy our memories as a sort of lived fiction, each of them pieced together like pearls on a fraying string, or pieced across multiple lengths of thread like vignettes, like chapters of the life of a character bearing a name identical to our own. This is what I believe The Planets means to emphasize: A return to what has passed, a return to memory as an attempt to make sense of the chaos and indeterminacy of the present; an encounter with the fiction of a life lived and still living.
leaflinglearns's review
4.0
A very strange and surreal book. I don't really know how to explain the plot, so I'll let the publisher do it for me:
When he reads about a mysterious explosion in the distant countryside, the narrator’s thoughts turn to his disappeared childhood friend, M, who was abducted from his home years ago, during a spasm of political violence in Buenos Aires in the early 1970s. He convinces himself that M must have died in this explosion, and he begins to tell the story of their friendship through a series interconnected vignettes, hoping in this way to reanimate his friend and relive the time they spent together wandering the streets of Buenos Aires.
Ok, that sounds about right. But this book isn't so much about the politics in Buenos Aires. This book is about memory, friendship, and loss. The narrator goes over many different segmented memories of himself and his time with his friend, M. The book meanders around, sharply focusing on certain instances for a while, then tumbles right into a new memory. I was tugged about by the narrator's thoughts, not by any real chronology. The unconventional structure was difficult at first, but it sort of parallels how memories really are.
The Planets was definitely a slow read, but I do believe that it was worth it. Sometimes I would get so wrapped up in the strange stories told about M, or told by M with no apparent connection to any reality, that I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about them for the rest of the day. They seem hard to tie together as you're reading them, but taking the time to concentrate while reading definitely becomes worth it by the end. The narrator comes more clearly into focus, time starts to align, and we essentially see the impact of M's disappearance. I almost gave up on the book at the beginning, but I'm glad that I didn't.
If you have the time to slowly read, and you don't mind a bit of philosophizing, I think this book is worth a shot. Especially if you have weird hang ups about/interest in memory. Like I do.
Full review: http://outlandishlit.blogspot.com/2013/04/review-planets-by-sergio-chefjec.html
When he reads about a mysterious explosion in the distant countryside, the narrator’s thoughts turn to his disappeared childhood friend, M, who was abducted from his home years ago, during a spasm of political violence in Buenos Aires in the early 1970s. He convinces himself that M must have died in this explosion, and he begins to tell the story of their friendship through a series interconnected vignettes, hoping in this way to reanimate his friend and relive the time they spent together wandering the streets of Buenos Aires.
Ok, that sounds about right. But this book isn't so much about the politics in Buenos Aires. This book is about memory, friendship, and loss. The narrator goes over many different segmented memories of himself and his time with his friend, M. The book meanders around, sharply focusing on certain instances for a while, then tumbles right into a new memory. I was tugged about by the narrator's thoughts, not by any real chronology. The unconventional structure was difficult at first, but it sort of parallels how memories really are.
The Planets was definitely a slow read, but I do believe that it was worth it. Sometimes I would get so wrapped up in the strange stories told about M, or told by M with no apparent connection to any reality, that I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about them for the rest of the day. They seem hard to tie together as you're reading them, but taking the time to concentrate while reading definitely becomes worth it by the end. The narrator comes more clearly into focus, time starts to align, and we essentially see the impact of M's disappearance. I almost gave up on the book at the beginning, but I'm glad that I didn't.
If you have the time to slowly read, and you don't mind a bit of philosophizing, I think this book is worth a shot. Especially if you have weird hang ups about/interest in memory. Like I do.
Full review: http://outlandishlit.blogspot.com/2013/04/review-planets-by-sergio-chefjec.html
jacob_wren's review
5.0
Sergio Chejfec writes:
Neither of us would have imagined that, years later, these events would be written down on paper. If we had foreseen this, we would have acted differently, guiding our steps according to our idea of posterity; fortunately, we did not. (This foreseeing should be clarified, however, given that if M knew the reasons why I would end up writing these pages, he certainly would have done what was needed to avoid his abduction, though, in fact, he did nothing at all to cause it. They say that one could avoid innumerable problems, mistakes, and catastrophes if one knew how things were going to turn out, but this is an impossible dream. The most extreme example of this is that we are all certain of death – and even, expanding things a bit, about the decline of civilization, the destruction of the environment, and the inevitable ostracism of the sun – but are still unable to avoid the end. What keeps us from losing hope in the fact of this inescapable truth? A belief in the interim, in the fact that, in the meantime, things happen that are worth experiencing.)
Neither of us would have imagined that, years later, these events would be written down on paper. If we had foreseen this, we would have acted differently, guiding our steps according to our idea of posterity; fortunately, we did not. (This foreseeing should be clarified, however, given that if M knew the reasons why I would end up writing these pages, he certainly would have done what was needed to avoid his abduction, though, in fact, he did nothing at all to cause it. They say that one could avoid innumerable problems, mistakes, and catastrophes if one knew how things were going to turn out, but this is an impossible dream. The most extreme example of this is that we are all certain of death – and even, expanding things a bit, about the decline of civilization, the destruction of the environment, and the inevitable ostracism of the sun – but are still unable to avoid the end. What keeps us from losing hope in the fact of this inescapable truth? A belief in the interim, in the fact that, in the meantime, things happen that are worth experiencing.)