My Two Worlds

My Two Worlds - Sergio Chejfec

Approaching his fiftieth birthday, the narrator in My Two Worlds is wandering in an unfamiliar Brazilian city, in search of a park. A walker by inclination and habit, he has decided to explore the city after attending a literary conferencehe was invited following the publication of his most recent novel, although, as he has been informed via anonymous e-mail, the novel is not receiving good reviews. Initially thwarted by his inability to transpose the two-dimensional information of the map onto the impassable roads and dead-ends of the three-dimensional city, once he finds the park the narrator begins to see his own thoughts, reflections, and memories mirrored in the landscape of the park and its inhabitants.Chejfec's My Two Worlds, an extraordinary meditation on experience, writing, and space, is at once descriptively inventive and preternaturally familiar, a novel that challenges the limitations of the genre.

Published: 2011-08-16 (Open Letter)

ISBN: 9781934824283

Language: English

Format: Paperback, 103 pages

Goodreads' rating: -

Genres

Fiction Literature Latin American Cultural

Reviews

Silas rated it

"Chejfec's My Two Worlds, an extraordinary meditation on experience, writing, and space, is at once descriptively inventive and preternaturally familiar, a novel that challenges the limitations of the genre." -Open Letter BooksWhile not exactly a book for the masses, I was quickly taken in by the familiarity of Chejfec's ruminating stroll. At various points I found the narrator observant, thoughtful, hilarious, and incredibly tedious. The intimacy created made it a challenge to read at times. A perfect illustration of spending time with ones self.

Baldwin rated it

I decided to read this strange, melancholic little book both in Spanish and in the English translation (which was good, though definitely not close to great--it's so hard to translate Arg Spanish!) after a recommendation, and it proved a good idea. I read both almost simultaneously, as I used to do with Simone de B's books, and it made the flights of fancy transitions easier to 'get'--though I suspect that this would be easier still for someone with a much better command of Spanish who'd read it only in Spanish.What is it about? Nothing, really, and everything--very much a 'Being and Nothingness' allegory, a fluid stream-of-consciousness a la existential mode which nonetheless draws us beyond and into the modern world via its successive emotional/psychological analysis of the material world while we're 'deep in thought'. That, the loss one experiences from the physical world while in a 'dream world' of thoughts and sensations, is the strongest part of the work, which I hesitate to call a novel. This is why, pretty much, I can't give it more than 3 stars: it really is NOT a novel and, for me, loses steam throughout precisely because of that.

Brooke rated it

This book was a pleasant and peaceful read for me- something I think all writers must delve into. Through the narrator's stream of consciousness we are given a glimpse into the mind of this writer while he walks through a park in Brazil. We see him relate himself to the things he sees, from fish to boats to other people, in ways that convey an uncanny sense of intimate familiarity with a completely unknown place. With this novel, Chejfec forces us to recognize that we do not live in just one world, that in fact there are realities beyond what we superficially see, and that we "know nothing of the variable worlds we'll inhabit."