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Published Apr 2014
160 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
One trip. Two love stories. Three voices.
Lito is ten years old and is almost sure he can change the weather when he concentrates very hard. His father, Mario, anxious to create a memory that will last for his son's lifetime, takes him on a road trip in a truck called Pedro. But Lito doesn't know that this might be their last trip: Mario is seriously ill. Together, father and son embark on travels that take them through strange geographies, ones that seem to unite the borders of Spanish-speaking world. In the meantime, Lito's mother Elena looks for support in books, undertaking an adventure of her own that will challenge her moral limits. The narratives of father, mother, and son each embody one of the different ways that we talk to ourselves: through thought, speech, and writing. While neither of them dares to tell the complete truth to the other two, their solitary voices nonetheless form a poignant conversation.
Sooner or later, we all face loss. Andrés Neuman movingly narrates the ways the lives of those who survive loss are transformed; how that experience changes our ideas about time, memory, and our own bodies; and how the acts of reading, and of sex, can serve as powerful modes of resistance. Talking to Ourselves presents a tender yet unsentimental portrait of the workings of love and family; a reflection on death, sex, grief, and the consolation of words. Neuman, the author of the award-winning Traveler of the Century, displays his characteristic warmth, humanism, and wide-ranging intellect, giving us the rich, textured, and strikingly different voices and experiences of three singular characters while presenting, above all, a profound tribute to those who have cared for a loved one.
"Starred Review. The unflinching gazes of Neuman's characters drive this slim novel. Joy, regret, hope... it's all here." - Publishers Weekly
"This triptych of a dying man's commitment to his family and their response will infuse readers with its poignant, realistic experience." - Library Journal
"A slight work, on both the personal and metaphysical level." - Kirkus
"Moving and intelligent." - The Paris Review
"A novelist of rare talent... at the book's end, the reader wishes for more pages: to see Lito grow up, to see if Elena remakes her life... That happens when the writer has the touch of a poet." - L'Arena (Argentina)
"There are many reasons to love Andrés Neuman...The biggest reason is, of course, his writing. In Talking to Ourselves...he gives a luminous confirmation of this...Each character talks to himself, but in the end they speak for all of us." - La Republica (Argentina)
"An exciting and risky literary adventure, brought to life with remarkable stylistic subtlety...Rich, complex, and playful, this novel by Andrés Neuman is, by far, one of the most valuable and stylistically substantial literary works I've read in recent years." - El Gran Otro (Argentina)
"[Neuman] is not only capable of navigating different genres, writing works both long or short, and locating himself in eras both distant or contemporary, he also has a great delicacy in taking the reader by the hand to the frontiers of pain." - Siempre México (Mexico)
This information about Talking to Ourselves was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Andrés Neuman was born in 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and grew up in Spain. He has a degree in Spanish philology from the University of Granada. Neuman was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists and was elected to the Bogotá-39 list. Traveler of the Century (FSG, 2012) was the winner of the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, Spain's two most prestigious literary awards.
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