Fate /

Argentine novelist Consiglio (Southerly) offers a moving testament to the beauty and banality of human relationships. In an opening note, Consiglio muses on the mystery of whether events are determined by fate or chance, and cites the film The Third Man as inspiration for the atmospheric tone. Consiglio's four protagonists crisscross modern-day Buenos Aires: Marina Kezelman, a meteorologist embarking on an affair, drinks coffee and consults an I Ching app; later, her husband, Karl, goes to the park with their son, where he narrowly avoids collision with a frisbee. Meanwhile, Amer, an aging taxidermist, endeavors to nourish his budding romance with the noncommittal Clara. Amer prepares guacamole after work; Karl eats two chocolate bars while shopping for his wife's birthday present; Marina Kezelman orders an oat muffin in the airport. These ordinary actions move Consiglio's characters along and enact consequences of ambiguous provenance and irresistible force. Throughout, the power of the quotidian is harnessed by the prose ("Everything fastened together in a joyful line. Something unstoppable: a chain of wise choices and well-being"). This subtle, swiftly executed accomplishment lures with its aura of classic art house cinema. (May)

Award-winning Argentinian poet and novelist Consiglio explores the idea of destiny in the quotidian lives of four characters in Buenos Aires. A taxidermist named Amer makes guacamole. Marina, a meteorologist, fights an infestation of ants in her kitchen and later takes her young son, Simón, to swimming lessons. Her husband, Karl, a German oboist, walks home from rehearsal, missing his eldest daughter back in Europe. In short chapters full of minute detail, we follow these characters' lives. Attempting to quit smoking, Amer joins a self-help group and falls for a young woman named Clara. Marina turns 40. She does not believe in coincidences and consults an I Ching app on her phone. Her husband struggles with the feeling that living in Buenos Aires has changed him. "Karl was someone else but also himself. This fact--so obscure that he found it hard to put into words--materialised in a blurry and seemingly unfounded sorrow which was hard to shake off." He buys his wife an orange vibrator for a birthday present and hides it, unwrapped, in their son's room. In a different book, the vibrator would be discovered there, occasioning a scene of some kind. But Consiglio is not interested in cause and effect but in the accretion of granular detail. The taxidermist applies the tiniest amount of vegetable oil to the glass eyes of a stuffed otter: "The smallest of details: two strokes to the right, two to the left. That was his secret: it gave a sparkle to the gaze." While this reporting of mundane action can leave the reader longing for a more traditional plot, the novel is interesting in the way it challenges that expectation, gesturing toward a broader truth. On her way home after a liaison, the adulterous Marina, moistening her lips in the mirror, "imagined that thousands of people--people crossing the city in taxis--were doing the same, exactly the same, at that very instant. To a point, she thought the harmony that brought them all together erased the very notion of individuality. Then, with her eyes still shut, she went a bit further still: she said to herself that she, with all her infidelity, neglect, secrets and guilt, was simply performing a cliché that humanity had repeated over and over again since the beginning of time." A muted and unhurried novel that insists on the validity of the imperfect present. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.