Based on "Where We Come From", the first Oscar Cásares novel that I have read, this writer is a master of understated highlights. His discipline, his control of what happens on the page, is formidable.
Where We Come From
Joost de Vries Talks about “The Republic”
In quite a lot of books, the narrator is a camera; he just observes and let other characters do the entertaining heavy lifting. I wanted to have a Nathan Zuckerman-kinda protagonist, who sets out and does all kinds of stupid stuff himself, is funny, is weird, is misguided, is in his way quite brave and adventurous. He does a lot of things I would not dare to do myself.
Joost de Vries’ The Republic
As the scholars of The Republic delve into Hitler studies, the specialized branches of research sprout increasingly weird. How about a specialty in Hitlerian pornography, or the sub-trend of Chilean naming of their sons “Hitler”, and how about a trip to Chile to interview them? Or a study of a fashion in Hitler moustaches?
Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami consists of about 65 short chapters each named after a character, each of whom speaks in first person. Chapter headings repeat, which is a clever way to gauge the importance of each character in the structure of the story.
Dave Egger’s The Parade
We are in a third world country that has been devastated by civil war. Its state is barely functional and beyond the capital there is societal chaos as well as signs of life renewing itself. Two contractors are assigned by a vaporous multinational to build a highway from the more developed north, where the capital is, to the entropic southland.
Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel
Nine Street Women subtitles Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art. Those 5 names are icons, foundational to our modernity. In their early days, they were women with balls. What they all had in common was a drive to overcome any social, gender, personal or political obstacles that were put in their path, and there were plenty. They struggled, and picked themselves off the floor more than once, but never did any of them give up. They refused to fail.