Valeria LuiselliRezensionen

A Lost Family

I really wanted to like this book. It deals with important social issues...

1. The immigration crisis & its effects on families
2. Family dissolution and its effects on children
3. The ecfects of parents self absorption on children
The parents in this book were so focused on helping others and documenting the wrongs of society that they were blind to the pain they inflicted on the people closest to them, their own "lost children".
It was a very dense text in which the author inserted related stories and quotes. This took away from the flow of the story.

Een schrijfster waarover ik al meerdere keren goede dingen las, waarvan ik meerdere positieve recensies las, maar die ik liever niet vertaald wilde lezen, is Valeria Luiselli. Het eerste boek dat ik tegenkwam was dit Lost Children Archive. Zware titel, moeilijk onderwerp. Maar wel een logische keuze, gezien de achtergrond van de schrijfster. Met de foto’s achterin concludeer ik dan ook dat het boek niet geheel fictie is, dat er een daadwerkelijke zoektocht heeft plaatsgevonden.

In New York is de schrijfster op haar plaats. Zij mag prachtige projecten doen, haar man helpt haar – zo hebben ze elkaar ontmoet – en het samengestelde gezin is gelukkig. Maar aan de grens gaat er van alles mis. Kinderen worden opgesloten, kinderen worden bij ouders weggehaald, kinderen proberen zonder ouders de grens te passeren. En als een vriendin haar hulp vraagt, omdat haar kinderen onderweg zijn naar NY, kan ze niet meer aan de zijlijn blijven staan.

Zeker als de kinderen ook nog eens kwijtraken, iemand moet naar ze op zoek. En dus beginnen ze aan een roadtrip vanaf NY naar de grens met Mexico. De beroemde speld in de hooiberg.

Het knappe van Luiselli is dat ze beide verhalen (de zoektocht en de tocht van de kinderen) naast elkaar kan vertellen, het perspectief wisselt regelmatig. En als lezer weet je dat er een moment komt dat de paden elkaar moeten kruisen. Maar de manier waarop dat uiteindelijk gebeurt is een stuk dramatischer, spectaculairder dan verwacht.

Luiselli heeft een prachtig boek geschreven, warm, betrokken. Maar tegelijkertijd een groot maatschappelijk probleem aangekaart, de grens die meneer Trump probeerde dicht te bouwen met een gigantische muur, is een grens die al jaren lek is. Te veel mensen hebben er belang bij dat die grens niet waterdicht wordt. Maar tussen mensensmokkelaars en drugsbendes lopen dus ook gewoon kinderen op zoek naar hun ouders. Kinderen die zo jong zijn dat ze geen idee hebben hoe gevaarlijk de wereld is, die zich moeten redden tegen alle verwachtingen in.

Schitterend boek, moet meer lezen van deze dame.

Citaat: “…I realized that what I was saying made no sense, that my brain was just going round and round, empty and full of hot air only, though sometimes when the desert wind came, it cleared my thoughts for a moment, but mostly there was just hot air, dust, rocks, bushes, and light, especially light, so much of it, so much light pouring down from the sky that it was hard to think, hard to see clearly, too, hard to see even the things we knew by name, by hear,…” (p.319)

Op Social Media zag ik vaak aanbevelingen over de schrijfster, ook nog eens van mensen wiens oordeel ik vertrouw. Vorig jaar las ik voor het eerst een boek van haar en ik werd weggeblazen. Zo mooi, zo indrukwekkend.

Dit jaar las ik dit boek digitaal, met veel zin. Het duurde even, ik kwam er niet in. Het duurde nog wat langer en ik merkte dat ik er nog steeds weinig van begreep. En toen had ik het uit. Nog steeds kon ik het niet duiden. In het nawoord verteld de vertaalster al dat zij veel vragen had. Ik begrijp het. De vragen kan ik niet eens verwoorden.

Natuurlijk kan ik wel lezen, kan ik de gebeurtenissen in me opnemen. De gedachten die beschreven worden probeer ik te volgen. Maar het geheel krijg ik niet, de achterliggende gedachte vang ik niet, de boodschap is onduidelijk. Het kan niet altijd raak zijn, maar vervelend vind ik het wel. Waarom begrijp ik het niet?

Citaat: “Dakota zong in drie verschillende bars, en wanneer ze snel geld nodig had, zong ze in de metro. Op een avond ging ik naar het metrostation van lijn 1 om naar haar te kijken. Ik had mijn houten stoel meegenomen en die tegen de muur van het perron gezet, met mijn gezicht naar de voorbijrijdende metro’s. Dakota en haar vriend hadden midden op het perron plaatsgenomen. Haar vriend speelde gitaar en keek naar haar zoals buiksprekers naar hun pop en ouders naar hun kinderen.” (p23/84)

Modernist fiction and political activism have been brought together to produce Lost Children Archive. Luiselli is the daughter of a Mexican ambassador. She grew up in countries around the world as her father was posted to them to represent his nation, she is the holder of a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Columbia University, she is a professor at Hofstra, and, like myself and probably most people who will read this novel, has political values commonly found in people from such a cosmopolitan, intellectual, relatively elite background. When the southern border crisis grew around 2014 or so, Luiselli admirably volunteered her time and efforts to help the desperate refugees trying to reach the United States navigate the US legal system. One isn't surprised to read that this novel began as a self-admitted screed against American racism and American imperialism before being put on hold and later re-worked as a modernist intertextual manuscript, in dialogue with Pound, Eliot, Woolf, and others.

Does it work, judging it as fiction (as we have to take it for granted that it won't change a thing politically)? In the first half of this novel of two parts, the story is told from the point of view of a mother traveling by car from NYC to the border area with her soon-to-be ex-husband and their two children. She is working on a story about the children who travel to the border alone and disappear in their attempt, wiped from the map, except sometimes as a red X marking where bodies are found in the desert. She questions her project, mirroring Luiselli herself no doubt:

Political concern: How can a radio documentary be useful in helping more undocumented children find asylum? Aesthetic problem: On the other hand, why should a sound piece, or any other form of storytelling, for that matter, be a means to a specific end? I should know, by now, that instrumentalism, applied to any art form, is a way of guaranteeing really shitty results: light pedagogic material, moralistic young adult novels, boring art in general. Professional hesitance: But then again, isn't art for art's sake so often an absolutely ridiculous display of intellectual arrogance? Ethical concern: And why would I even think that I can or should make art with someone else's suffering?

Along the way she and her family come into contact with some unfortunately stereotypically drawn caricatures of bigoted residents of "middle America". There is a funny scene though when she and her husband meet a man who is an enthusiast of Westerns, and in trying to fake a sympathetic fondness for them herself, she can only come up with Bela Tarr's Satantango, which the clueless gentleman admits to being unfamiliar with and suggests they watch it together. Our family flees before discovery. As a scene demonstrating the vast cultural gulf and disconnectedness between stereotypical "coastal elites" and stereotypical "middle America", it's pretty good.

In part two of the story, the narration shifts to her ten year old son, who takes along his five year old sister as they run away from their parents to find some "lost children" and make their way to a location of importance to the Apache tribe, whose genocidal destruction by the white imperialists is the focus of the husband. His voice is sometimes completely unbelievable as a child, and sometimes boringly simplistic enough to be so. It culminates in a fever dream of a 20 page long sentence in which his viewpoint alternates with that of a small group of lost refugee children who seem to physically emerge from a book he and the mother have been reading in a whirlwind of, what, neo-magical realism? Definitely odd, sometimes engrossing, sometimes not.

Overall for me it is a novel that is highly intellectual, produces lots to discuss, and is moderately enjoyable as a work of fiction.

Highly recommended as a succinct and compassionate introduction to the refugee crisis that has been unfolding in the US.

WINNER OF THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2021 Explores what holds a family and society together and what pulls them apart. It juxtaposes rich, poetic prose with direct storytelling.

(7.5)I have been anticipating reading this book for a few years, especially after reading [American Dirt]. If I remember correctly, Luiselli was critical of [[Jeanine Cummins]], for sensationalizing a very serious situation in her book. I personally found [American Dirt] a page-turner and thought it drew my attention to the crisis.
Not so, in this novel. I found it slow moving and struggled to engage with the individual members in this family. I found both parents portrayed were self-absorbed and very focused on pursuing their career paths. The road trip sounded tedious for the children. I, also wondered if there was an autobiographical element to the story. The story finally gains momentum when the son picks up the narrative and this section saved the book from a lower rating by me. However, this section was also written in solid text of one single long sentence! I recommend you make time to read it in one sitting, possibly the purpose of this devise.

There's something about how she explores the lines of literature v experience, not gimmicky meta but just looking at characters and people. This book is great on its own and also as a starting point for understanding her later works.

Fabulous. Incredible, rich in myths, a fable to be celebrated.

fabulous (adj.)
early 15c., "mythical, legendary," from Latin fabulosus "celebrated in fable;" also "rich in myths," from fabula "story, tale" (see fable (n.)). Meaning "pertaining to fable" is from 1550s. Sense of "incredible" first recorded c. 1600, hence "enormous, immense, amazing," which was trivialized by 1950s to "marvelous, terrific."

link: from Etymonline

First, let me say that if I were just reviewing the writing of this book alone, it would definitely be in five star territory. I loved the narrative voices, especially of the mother, and the use of language. I also found it interesting how the author used literary references and wove in language and metaphors of other authors. I wouldn't hesitate to pick up another book by this author.

All that being said, thematically, I think this book tried way too hard. Ostensibly, the story is about a blended family where a father with a son married a mother with a daughter. The father and mother met on a work project where they connected, but when that project ended, their divergent career goals started to tear them apart. And there in lies my first critique, their career goals really were not all that different, and it's pretty hard for me to imagine their marriage falling apart because of them, and yet, the reader wasn't really shown much else about the marriage, so there's no other conclusion that can be reached.

The novel goes on to attempt to tie the history of the Apache Indians to our current immigration situation with the imminent loss of this family. The Apache references seemed completely superfluous to me. I didn't think they added to the theme nor really enhanced the story. Ostensibly, the father was obsessed with researching them, but beyond that, it just seemed extraneous and distracting.

The parallels between some of the challenges with our immigration/refugee issues here in the U.S. and the loss of family due to divorce worked better for me. The son narrates the second half of the book, and I felt there were specific scenes that related to his step sister that were so well done. I felt his pain at both the thought of losing her and the real loss of her. The issues regarding immigration were mostly put forward in the form of chapters of a book that the son and mother were reading called the Elegies of Lost Children, and the sorrows and struggles evoked there were moving.

All in all, I would have liked to see this book edited differently. I felt that the author's true strengths were muddied by trying to do too much. Sometimes less is more, and the prose was evocative and beautiful making the "cleverness" just feel like overreaching.

"I don't keep a journal. My journals are the things I underline in books."

"Why is it that looking through someone's things is always somehow so sad and also endearing, as if the deep fragility of the person becomes exposed in their absence, through their belongings?"

"I have never asked a bookseller for a book recommendation. Disclosing desires and expectations to a stranger whose only connection to me is in abstract, the book, seems too much like Catholic confession, if only a more intellectualized version of it."
--

Ah, this book! The reason I do continue to pick up Knopf books is that I do love them oh so dearly when they turn out to be good ones.

One must be warned, there is a sentence that goes on for about twenty pages. But I still liked it! This is the kind of thing I find, well, gimmicky, but Luiselli's writing is just so utterly gorgeous that the only reason I really minded this sentence was that I had to get off the train and there was no good stopping point.

This is very clearly divided into two separate parts, which I didn't expect, which makes me want to go back and read it again because I didn't know that there would be no more from the woman's voice until the end and her words were all so terribly lovely and thoughtful and carefully selected.

I think the thing I loved most about this, in addition to the careful word selection and the way that so many thoughts struck completely home with me, was the sense of feeling each scene evoked. I could feel the dust in my hair in the vast desert, and I could have been another passenger on their road trip because Luiselli truly transported me.

Stellar, stellar writing.

Some books challenge our expectations of what a novel is or what it should be. "Lost Children Archive" is a case in point. Ostensibly a "road novel", it shows us a family (a husband, a wife and their respective son and daughter from previous marriages) on a road trip between New York and Arizona. The couple met when they were working on a documentary project on the various languages of New York. However, their latest projects seem to be pulling them apart: the husband becomes obsessed with the last of the Apaches whereas the wife is planning a sound documentary on children detained at the border. It is clear that the family is breaking up, but this internal division becomes itself a symbol of families of migrants forcibly split apart.

In classic "post-modern" fashion, the narrative teases out links between the various strands of the story; sways between realism and fantasy/magical realism; and incorporates into the story such unlikely items as inventories of the contents of the boxes accompanying the family on the trip.

Much as I appreciate the work's originality and admire its complexity, I must admit that finishing this book was a challenge to me. Its best parts were brilliant, but there were points when I started asking myself whether the novel was being too clever for its own good. So I'll go for three stars on this - I don't doubt it's a very good (and very topical) novel, and others have rightly extolled its virtues. However, I can't say I really enjoyed it...

There were a lot of things I didn’t love but overall it made me think and I really enjoyed reading it

How does one tell the difference between a story and an intellectual exercise? Or are we all trapped in an infinite loop? Does the story end where intellect begins? Does it matter?

I would give it a higher rating if I could have liked the novelist and the poet more. As it is, 3.5, and recommended if you want to be left in strange confusion.

a rambling, casually pretentious undergraduate creative nonfiction thesis which takes an hour to read -- keep in mind that You Will Not Get That Hour Back

the highlights of this slog:
- the "Achille Beccari (1860-1893)" section on p. 104 has interesting insight on secular upbringings
- repeatedly reminded me to cop [b:The Walk|160315|The Walk|Robert Walser|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1172284265l/160315._SY75_.jpg|49527483] which i've been abstractly wanting to do

This beautifully written book seems to be something different to everyone who reviews it. While yes, it is overtly about immigration - to me, it's also about sound, and words, and documenting, and memories, and journeys.

It's exactly the kind of book I enjoy and also exactly the kind of book I probably wouldn't recommend to most. There is a plot, but it's mostly introspection.

It was a strange coincidence that while I was reading this book, the governor of Florida illegally lured and flew migrants and asylum seekers to Martha's Vineyard as a political stunt. This just underscored the ongoing plight of lost children I was reading about.

Powerful story about a family that travels from New York to Arizona by car to research the ancestral home of the Apache so the father can record what remains of their civilization. The father is a “documentarian” and the mother “documentarist,” and the differences between the two become a recurring theme. The parents experience increasing levels of conflict, and the two children (a ten-year-old boy and five-year-old girl) sense something is amiss. In the background, there are radio accounts of immigrant children detained at the Mexican border as well as reports of children wandering in the desert. The mother has been helping an immigrant locate her children.

It is narrated by the mother in short chapters, reflecting what is happening during their trip as well as her inner thoughts that wander from future worries to events of the past. This style is particularly effective in mimicking a road trip, where passengers see different landscapes out the window, doze off, and wake up to new environments. The story is interspersed with descriptions of the content of boxes, which we assume are stored in the trunk.

This book illuminates the telling of stories through various lenses (archives, credentials, documents, recordings of sights and sounds, physical journeys). It also examines the plight of immigrant children and refugees. It sheds light what a person can do to alleviate the suffering of others and to understand the forces that created the suffering in the first place. I found it relevant and insightful.

Dit is geschreven, zo’n 5 jaar voor het knappe Lost Children Archive, en je merkt dat dit in veel opzichten een experimenteel boek is. In haar nawoord licht Luiselli toe dat dit de vrucht is van de interactie met een boekenclub van Mexicaanse arbeiders. Het is wellicht beter dit te weten voor je aan de lectuur begint. Want het boek zelf heeft daardoor de vorm gekregen van een installatie, naar de sculpturen die in de loop van de 20ste eeuw meer en meer in zwang kwamen en de kloof tussen verhalen en materie probeerden te overbruggen. Luiselli lijkt iets gelijkaardigs te proberen met een boek dat vol staat van de metafictionele verwijzingen, maar tegelijk de indruk geeft dat dat allemaal maar spel is.
De roman is opgehangen aan het merkwaardige leven van Gustave Sanchez Sanchez, bijgenaamd Snelweg; een merkwaardig leven inderdaad, toch ten minste in de eerste verhalen, waarin we Gustave een grootsprakerige monoloog horen opvoeren en het onwaarschijnlijke verhaal van zijn leven horen vertellen. Zijn kromme en scheve tanden spelen daarin een niet onbelangrijke symbolische én materiële rol. Zoals ik al aangaf, is Gustave grootsprakerig, een beetje highbrow (met een opeenstapeling van knipogen naar de groten uit de wereldliteratuur en de filosofie) en in het geheel overwegend schelms, zowel in de charmerende als de afstotende zin (met onder andere een biopic door Luiselli zelf).
Op het einde volgt dan een enigszins voorspelbare twist waarin we een andere verteller een heel ander licht zien schijnen op het leven van Gustave, dat uiteraard veel minder groots blijkt. Een afsluitende reeks zwart-witfoto’s (Sebald?) en een tijdsbalk proberen het verhaal van Sanchez dan weer een pseudo-objectieve schijn te geven.
Zoals gezegd, dit lijkt een schrijfexperiment dat vooral een metafictioneel verhaal wil vertellen, in postmoderne zin; de vele motto’s voor elk hoofdstukje gaan bijna allemaal over de problematische relatie tussen teken en betekenis; dat zegt al genoeg. Tegelijk doet Luiselli haar best om het highbrow-gehalte van haar roman te doorprikken. Voor mij was het in het begin in elk geval amusant en intrigerend, maar na een tijdje was de magie toch wel wat uitgewerkt.½

A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the border crisis. Very illuminating and powerful.

This was an incredibly emotional little book for me, which does a fantastic job of humanizing the border crisis. One of the better books I've read this year.

There is much to admire in Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. The writing is wonderful, the setting is interesting, the style of the book is original and her characters, especially the son and daughter are spot-on. This is a book that is guaranteed to make you think, she covers a wide variety of topics, from how thousands of unaccompanied migrant children are processed in an immigration system that is not prepared and at times even hostile to the their situation; to the history of the native Indians and the treatment they received at the hands of the American government.

But along with these bigger issues, she also tells a wonderful story as she delves into the intricacy of family life as the bulk of the book is set in a car as a family takes a road trip, driving from New York City to Arizona. The couple is in conflict as he wants to relocate to Arizona for his research on Apaches while she can’t imagine leaving New York and her work chronicling missing child refugees. With a slowly dying marriage and two lively and perceptive children, who sense problems even if they aren’t exactly sure what they are, they head across America.

Lost Children Archive takes the great American road trip and twists it into a story of alienation and estrangement with the author staying true to both her political opinions and her personal empathy. I believe this is a polarizing book that one will either love or hate, personally I came down mostly on the side of love, although I found the switching of the narrator toward the end a little off-putting. I do know that I will be thinking of Lost Children Archive for quite some time.½

Absolutely charming, witty, odd, and delightful.

Alkoi (ja jatkui) vähän raskaasti ja tuntui ettei kerronta ala vetää. Loppua kohti kasvoin kiinni tähän kerronnan ja näkökulmien sekamelskaan, mutta ehkä vain niissä osioissa jotka kerrottiin lasten näkökulmasta. Aikuisiin en muodostanut mitään tunnesidettä.
Jotenkin suomennos vähän tökki, ehkä lasten puhetapa erityisesti. Olisi pitänyt lukea englanniksi mutta tämä nyt sattui tulemaan suomeksi ensin vastaan.

Almost too perfect--language and structure--but I didn't connect with the characters.

Abandoned. Not only is this book a deeply tedious exercise in intellectual masturbation (Valeria Luiselli really, really, really wants you to know that she's smart, so smart, and has read serious books and can use words like "edulcorated"), but in referring to the Apache and Cherokee in trying to draw attention to the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, Lost Children Archive reproduces the racist narrative of the "vanished Indian." Native people function here only as long-ago echoes and metaphors and (inaccurate) historical references—they're not present as living people or cultures. The narrator trying to be cutting about the (admittedly shitty!) actions of the American government, equates the consequences of the Indian Removal Act with deportation. Only deportation isn't what happened to the Cherokee, because you can't deport someone from their own land. A book as pretentious as it is thoughtless.½