Shadow Without a Name by Ignacio Padilla
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Borges Gone Haywire

Roberto Arlt meets Raymond Chandler in this noir-tale of shifting identities and uncertain motivations in exotic locations. Not until the final page is a possible reason for the reader's attention revealed. Well not quite. The reader discovers there may have never been a reason at all, no plot to be found, no sense in any of the events described, no point to the tale. So what justifies the time and energy devoted to the work (and it does take a great deal of both to keep the characters in place)? The prose, even in translation, is fluid and at times hypnotic. But the characters are clearly intended to have no depth or complexity in themselves; relationships are so thin as to be non-existent. Reasons for patently absurd actions have no real rationale. The story dissolves into itself without residue. The book's principle merit appears to lie in a certain cleverness which is meant to engage the reader through confusion rather than enchantment. So perhaps neither Arlt nor Chandler then, but a kind of Borgesian fable that has simply lost control of itself.

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