Luiselli Valeria - Faces in the Crowd

Praise for Faces in the Crowd

As spare, strange and beautiful as the Ezra Pound lines from which it takes its name, Faces in the Crowd is a first novel born out of the idea of disappearing. Its author, however, the 28-year-old Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli, is going to have to get used to her own visibility: the book confirms her as an extraordinary new literary talent. Daily Telegraph

Valeria Luisellis extraordinary debut novel Faces in the Crowd signals the arrival of major talent. The novels fragmented, poetic narrative immediately engages and slowly reveals its secrets. Is this a story about a woman discovering a forgotten Latin poet of the Harlem Renaissance? Is the woman imagined by the poet? Are they both ghosts in search of some way back to the real? Written in Spanish, and exquisitely translated by Christina MacSweeney, Faces in the Crowd is a fresh and essential voice for the new Latin American canon. Jeremy Ellis, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX

Faces in the Crowd is a subtle, sophisticated examination of identity, authenticity, and poetry. The narrator, a young married writer and mother of two, shares her struggles to write a novel about an obscure Mexican poet and the novel in progress, while remembering the time in her life when she became obsessed with him. Luiselli braids the three narrative currents into a brilliant meditation on the nature of creation. Translation hoax. Ghosts on the subway. The demonstrative vocabulary of a clever toddler. The mix of fact and fiction on the page and in the mind. With her first novel, Luiselli has established herself as a brilliant explorer of voice, self, and art. Josh Cook, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA

Luisellis novel stands apart from most Latin American fiction.... Faces in the Crowd signals the appearance of an exciting female voice to join a new wave of Latino writers. Observer

A young Mexican author with seemingly boundless intellect.... There are echoes of Garca Mrquezs Strange Pilgrims; Bolao, Hemingway and Emily Dickinson are all freely cited. The prose has luminous touches. Guardian

Faces in the Crowd presents itself as a remarkably confident novel from two first-timers. Confident in its handling, by a debut novelist, of the ambitious ideas that crackle through its voices, in its complex structure and the daring intimacy of its field of vision. And confident in its debut translator Christina MacSweeneys mastery of language: sometimes sharp-edged, sometimes playful and consistently effective. Independent

This Mexican-born writers first novel grapples with something that permeates so much of the imaginative landscape: the battle between fantasy and reality. This theme is mapped out in a story that binds our narrator, an unhappily married mother of two living in Mexico City, and the Mexican poet Gilberto Owen, to a point where their two worlds crumble into each other like shifting sand.... Luisellis writing is full of verve, yet it has a mournful quality that anchors an otherwise almost supernatural world. Irish Times

Valeria Luiselli has a passion for games. And she aims high. She makes matter implode and stratifies it, and then breaks it, leaving the reader to pull the strings at his will. Rolling Stone (Italy)

When Gilberto Owens ghostly figure appears as a second narrator, challenging the reader to ask himself who is actually writing the novel, the decision is made: we love Valeria Luiselli! Marie Claire (Italy)

Contents

COPYRIGHT Valeria Luiselli 2011

ENGLISH TRANSLATION COPYRIGHT Christina MacSweeney 2012

First published in English by Granta Books, Great Britain, 2012

Originally published in Spanish as Los ingrvidos by Sexto Piso, Mexico, 2011

Extracts from Gilberto Owens letters and his poem Autorretrato o del Subway (Self-subway-portrait) appeared in Gilberto Owen, Obras, Mxico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1996.

COVER DESIGN by Nathan Burton Design Ltd., nathanburtondesign.com

COVER PHOTOGRAPHS Subway Antonio M. Rosario at Getty Images, Post-it note iStockphoto

AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH by Alfredo Pelcastre

Coffee House Press books are available to the trade through our primary distributor, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, .
Coffee House Press is a nonprofit literary publishing house. Support from private foundations, corporate giving programs, government programs, and generous individuals helps make the publication of our books possible. We gratefully acknowledge their support in detail in the back of this book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Luiselli, Valeria, 1983

[Ingrvidos. English]

Faces in the crowd : a novel / by Valeria Luiselli ; translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-56689-355-8

I. MacSweeney, Christina, translator. II. Title.

PQ7298.422.U3715413 2014

863.7--DC23

2013035161

Beware! If you play at ghosts, you become one.

Anon., The Kabbalah

The boy wakes me up:

Do you know where mosquitos come from, Mama?

Where?

From the shower. During the day theyre inside the shower and at night they bite us.

*

It all began in another city and another life. Thats why I cant write this story the way I would like toas if I were still there, still just only that other person. I find it difficult to talk about streets and faces as if I saw them every day. I cant find the correct tenses. I was young, had strong, slim legs.

(I would have liked to start the way Hemingways A Moveable Feast ends.)

*

In that city I lived alone in an almost empty apartment. I slept very little. I ate badly, without much variety. I had a simple life, a routine. I worked as a reader and translator in a small publishing house dedicated to rescuing foreign gems. Nobody bought them, though, because in such an insular culture translation is treated with suspicion. But I liked my work and I believe that for a time I did it well. On Thursdays and Fridays, I did research in libraries, but the first part of the week was reserved for the office. It was a pleasant, comfortable place and, whats more, I was allowed to smoke. Every Monday, I arrived early, full of enthusiasm, carrying a paper cup brimming with coffee. I would say good morning to Minni, the secretary, and then to the chief editor, who was the only editor and therefore the chief. His name was White. I would sit down at my desk, roll a cigarette of Virginia tobacco, and work late into the night.

*

In this house live two adults, a baby girl, and a little boy. We call him the boy now because, although hes older than his sister, he insists that hes not properly big yet. And hes right. Hes older, but hes still small; hes neither the big boy nor the little boy. So hes just the boy.

A few days ago my husband stepped on a dinosaur when he was coming downstairs and there was a cataclysm. Tears, screaming: the dinosaur was shattered beyond repair. Now my T. rex really has been extincted, sobbed the boy. Sometimes we feel like two paranoid Gullivers, permanently walking on tiptoe so as not to wake anyone up, not to step on anything important and fragile.