There is a bag of tricks and japes and methods and setpieces in this Spanishnovel that may please devotees of postmodernist metafiction others will findit merel... » 

There is a bag of tricks and japes and methods and setpieces in this Spanishnovel that may please devotees of postmodernist metafiction others will findit merely burdensome. In the little sliver of actual story here Jacinto SanJose a countinghouse clerk suffers a phobia about zeros. MeanwhileJacintos coworker seems to have turned into a dog. And the countinghouseoverseer and ailaround generalissimo is the lordly femalebreastedritualistic Don Abdon. There are sections of incomplete speech in othersections all punctuation is spelled out . . . as if he were trying to catchsomething comma nervously comma and from between his fingers comma near hisnose comma a partridge flew out with a short whistle whic whic period instill other spots all personal pronouns are reassuringly doubleidentified.Moreover at the end Jacinto turns into the hedge he has been cultivating allthrough the book. The point of these thick but unaccountable elements? Amessage it seems about individuality and its annihilation The only chancewe humans had the Tower of Babel we threw it away like fools. But can youimagine my boy a free man without a coin in his pocket? Don Abdon you arethe most motherly father of all fathers. Then are you insinuating Jacinto SanJose that order is not freedom? Jack jack under every bed a whack Is ittrue that there are times when you have to write more zeroes than others beforeyou get dizzy? The hedge is the defense of the timid. Linguistic politicaland theologicalmetaphysical musings an unappealing metafictional stew.Kirkus Reviews «