Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner ***

Reading dates: 01–18 September 2015

I have been wanting to read contemporary novels for a while and Neil recommended me Ben Lerner’s work. It is a really interesting book, oppressive in its self-consciousness at times (that was so successful) but where the narrative gets clumsy towards the end. There is an attempt at resolution in the last five pages which, when not much happens, makes it fall flat. I say nothing happens, but, of course, there is a terrorist attack and a lot of protest, which the protagonist experiences from the computer in his apartment a few metres aways from it all. The remove is always there in the writing and that is what makes it work.