Mircea Cartarescu – Rem
Nov
09
I read it over the weekend and, to my surprise, I found it pretty interesting. I don’t have anything against Mircea Cartarescu, I just didn’t expect the book to get my attention as much as it did. But I guess, everyone has their own opinions and others might disagree with that.
The author takes us into a world filled with children’s games and plays with the thin line between reality and dream throughout the whole book. He takes the shape of an invisible spider crawling into the characters’ mind absorbing every word and thought. Every little detail takes the shape of a new world , where the little girls from our story make balloons out of soap that turn into eggs and they life to fantastic creatures, they create temporal lines with chalk and see each other growing old while walking on those lines, they play inside a giant man’s skeleton. In the middle of all these adventures, our protagonist, Svetlana, is trying to find Rem, being the only person in the world able to do that.
The images of Bucharest in the 1960’s are being described as seen through the eyes of a 12 year old, with all the excitement a child that age has for the world.One thing I didn’t like though is the extremely long descriptive passages. Yes, the details are meant to depict a stronger image, but honestly, sometimes those passages got me bored. But overall it was an interesting read.
