'The Story of My Teeth', by Valeria Luiselli

Δημοσιεύθηκε: 24 Απριλίου 2015 - 14:58

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The second novel by young Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli (after 2012's Faces in the Crowd) flirts with the fantastical tendency of Latin American literature, blurring the line between the real and the imagined - what its unreliable narrator Gustavo "Highway" Sanchez calls "hyperbolics".

On his titular quest to replace his rotten gnashers with perfect pearly whites, Sanchez turns auctioneer. His own teeth go under the hammer, passed off as those of Plato, Petrarch, Rousseau - "less to do with lying than surpassing the truth".

Although Sanchez's voice is an engaging one, his detours into philosophy feel like whimsy for its own sake. And despite Luiselli's wit and her smart pay-off, some readers will be left with the sense of ploughing through some extended in-joke.

The Story of My Teeth, by Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney, Granta, RRP£12.99, 188 pages

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