There’s something more awkward about commenting on the work of someone from your own country. The closer they are, the more you expect, perhaps. Many people I know love Levrero’s work dearly. He has been recommended to me many a time. I read a short collection of pieces he wrote over a year for the newspaper, and enjoyed it, but found it slightly underwhelming. The same could be said for this curious short novel, about a man who believes he has been visited by Gardel’s ghost. The man is a writer, who likes the rain and spends a lot of time in the National Library. He has an undeniably lecherous attitude to women, talking at length about how he likes finding himself in close confines with them on the bus. At which point you’re not quite sure as a reader how to place this character. Is he, as he initially seems, the writer’s alter-ego, or is he some slightly seedy older man? Perhaps the latter, but in that case, to what end? Why would a reader want to engage with him? And what does Gardel have to do with any of this? These were some of the questions that arose from reading the novel and I have to be honest and say they felt like slightly frustrating questions. Perhaps I chose the wrong novel, as I believe there are many, or perhaps, as a fellow Uruguayan, I am inclined to be overly critical.
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