VALERIA LUISELLI - LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE

Image: Geronimo

There’s a trove of Polaroid pictures at the end of this book. For no better reason than to withhold a treat for myself, I chose not to flip back there to examine the Polaroids whenever they cropped up in the narrative. I feel no wiser to have taken this approach. Approaches to this novel are many; the narrative is laden with external media sources, and one could make the case that a thorough reader should consume/digest these sources concurrently with the characters. Or after them. Or before them… There is an illicit pleasure in scrutinizing the bookshelf of someone you don’t know very well while they’re in the other room. Read, June 2019.