(Original Review, 1981-05-15)




If you like your novels simple and straightforward, don’t read “Hopscotch”.
If you have an allergy to extended brainy digressions and convoluted debates, you better avoid “Hopscotch”.
If you abhor puns, double entendre and wordplay, I most seriously advise you to stay clear of “Hopscotch”.
If you can’t stand literary, philosophical, musical and artistic references cramming your narrative, I sincerely prompt you to veer off taking “Hopscotch” from the bookseller’s shelf.
If you like your narrative to be free of phrases, expressions and vocabulary from languages you don’t know and don't care for, maybe “Hopscotch” is not a book for you.

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

I understand now why this one is classified as European lit all the time. I haven't researched it, but I'm pretty sure this one was written after Cortázar left Argentina, because the five stories in this volume are all set in Paris.

I was not that dazzled by this too much at first but then, my bar with Cortázar is "Bestiario", and that's a hard one to upstage in the wow (weird, awesome, uncomfortable, puzzling) factor.

Cartas de Mamá, leaving aside the historical parallelism that some scholar or other wants to saddle on it, was an excellent exercise on revealing the past through the present. Many authors could learn a thing or two about how to do back-story. Of course, back-story is the whole issue here: sins and regrets that turn into silences, and that end that is half fantasy, half delayed acknowledgement. And the great opening line:

"Muy bien hubiera podido llamarse libertad condicional."

Los Buenos Servicios was a very scathing look at how moneyed people use "the help", many times frivolously, and often callously, and how hollow the "throw money at it" approach is, which is more jarring  (and ridiculous) from the poised view of Francinet. She had more class than any of the cast.

Las Babas del Diablo is a POV nightmare. As it tends to happen when I read magical-realism, I enter a weird state where I'm paying close attention, but at the same time relax my mind and just go with it. Like suspension of disbelief, but I just suspend logic and sometimes even grammar. I find it pays off with many complex or weird plots, or speculative fiction too. Triggers galore in this one, and one VERY uncomfortable suspicion.

"El Perseguidor", now here is the jewel of the book, and the point where I started to love this collection. It was absolutely engrossing. I understand why it has been known to be edited as "El Perseguidor y otras historias". This one got to me, emotionally-wise, and I'm not even quite sure why. I guess it's that desperate search.

"Las Armas Secretas" you know how it's going to go almost from go. Or maybe it's that I've read enough Cortázar to understand the clues he leaves. Or, maybe more, this sense of having read one of his before, about a big house in San Isidro, that has similar elements, but I can't remember to which collection it belonged to contrast.

You know, the more I write, the higher I want to star this. I realize it made my brain jog, and my thoughts come back to it whenever I wasn't reading.

Not his best, but for "El Perseguidor" alone, so worth owning it. I predict re-reads.

And there it goes my 4th of July extra. I devoured it, lol

Nope.  Sorry.   I get while the writer is well regarded.  But there is something totally off putting in this book.  Mostly because of the female characters.  Sorry book, it's me, not you.

(NYRB Book of the Month Dec 2015.  Free per offer of joining for this year).