Customer Reviews

The People of Paper

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Salvador Plascencia's debut novel is a wonderfully strange, hallucinogenic and hypertextual blending of fiction and autobiography. The Prologue's first sentences thrust us into an almost familiar yet purely mythical world while introducing Plascencia's sly brand of humor: "She was made after the time of ribs and mud. By papal decree there were to be no more people born of the ground or from the marrow of bones. All would be created from the propulsions and mounts performed underneath bedsheets-rare exceptions granted for immaculate conceptions." What an astonishing, strange and deeply moving novel this is. In all his playfulness, Plascencia nonetheless grapples with troubling issues of free will, religious fidelity, ethnic identity, failed love and the creative process which he melds into a dreamscape that is impossible to forget. Plascencia-the God of his paper people-has given us a startling work of fiction that stretches not only the norms of storytelling, but also the bounds of our imagination. [The full review of this book first appeared in The Elegant Variation.]

Federico de la Fe is grieving for his wife who left him because he wets the bed. And he is leading an insane, futile, and destructive war against Saturn. Who is not only the planet Saturn but the author, Salvador Plascencia. That's the plot, I suppose. The book is packed with character sketches, meditations on the creative process, mind-bending inventions, including mechanical turtles, origami surgery, papercuts in intimate parts of the body, and its recurring theme, the pain of love and loss.

Author Plascencia is a fountain of creativity, but he is also repetitive and sometimes too clever. It is hard to really connect with the characters because the characters are too busy fighting a war with the author to develop themselves as three dimensional persons. They remain, mostly, people of paper.

The book is like a combination of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and James Joyce. It's intriguing, but hard to read, and hard to assimilate. It is a most novel novel. I recommend it but not for everyone. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

I give this book 10 Stars. The two reasons why are that I read it twice, the second time being as soon as I initially finished it, which I haven't done more than a handful of times in my life. The other reason is the book stops in the middle and starts again, thereby giving the reader two perfect books in one.

The only thing I'm certain of about this book is that Sr. Plascencia has presented something never done in literature before. I'm fully confident no one will honestly say this book is like anything read previously.

Of course, Sr. Plascencia also demonstrates a first-rate command of language, thematic structure that smoothly straddles so many genres it's barely containable by description, and unforgettable characters. That alone makes for great literature.

But there's more, and that's why this book is an instant classic -- a term I do not lightly toss for sake of impact and mean will be studied by scholars 100 years on.

This writer tells the truth, albeit in a fashion heretofore never ventured.

I'll not spoil the plot here. But I can offer no higher praise than to admit the second reading was more satisfying, and I'm confident the third will yield yet deeper appreciation.

If this book doesn't clean up every literary award this year, someone please explain why not.

This inaugural book by Salvador Plascencia is mind bending, reality altering, wickedly witty, ruthlessly clever, disarmingly charming, extraordinarily inventive and irreverently humorous. I am sure I have forgotten a few adjectives as well. With remarkable characters, Plascencia moves the reader through his own reality, dreams, conjectures and thoughts of events that happened, might have happened and couldn't possibly have happened. His dialog runs stealthily from religion and sex to field workers, Hollywood starlets, broken romances, planetary movement, physical disabilities and war and revenge. It will blast you out of your seat and take you on the wildest literary ride imaginable. It is a rare, astonishing and totally satisfying book to consume.

I also have not written a review for a book and have bought many on this site.

The "People of Paper" takes you into the mind of a lovesick author battling his own characters (literally) who in some ways represent his own psyche; thereby fighting himself. The author has created a work where your own imagination will not solely carry you through this brilliant and awe inspiring book, but the author creates and brings you into his world by using the page, using its space, in ways I have never seen, never thought of. It could have seemed pretentious but it comes off sincere, as if we couldn't think of this story to be fashioned otherwise.

As many have said, there is nothing quite like this fiction. I was astounded by the subtle, unique characters, the universe, the concept of Saturn, the war among ganglands in Southern California, and the manner in which the characters wish to be free from Salavdore, the omniscient narrator/author. It's an incredible journey, when completed, you feel a longing for the book, and connect as anyone has lost love, had a rebound, pontificating on the reasons for her/his departure.

Honestly, in many ways the small vinettes created to describe the adventures and thoughts of his characters reminds me of Vonnegut, just in universal theme and quick pace from plot line to plot line. It speaks in actions and moods unlike any novel I have read.

If there is one book to read this year and beyond, I cannot imagine a fictional work more appropriate. I tried my hand at a generic popular fiction book afterwards and almost longed for the fun, imaginative roller coaster ride of "The People of Paper."

A worthy investment and a gift for anyone looking for something new and refreshing!

If Amazon offered more stars, I'd give this book more stars. It is brutal, funny, heartbreaking--gorgeously written and completely original. Expect to be surprised, baffled, disoriented, but never disconnected or disinterested. With People of Paper, we're witnessing the emergence of an important young literary voice.

This book feels great. Whatever they did, I wish more books felt like it. It may be the canvas on which the beautiful illustration rests or the ink or the tight binding, but I love cradling it, sometimes even when I'm not in the middle of reading it.

And this is surely intentional--much of the book cries and pleads for you to hold it close and to remember that it is physical, whether this be through typography or cuts in pages or the use of multiple perspectives per page. It hops, taunting: "Try to make me digital! Try to make me audio! Try!"

I could talk about the story, but if you're not sucked in by the romance of the artifact, you're not worth it.

Also, the red ink that makes up the flowers on both covers bleeds onto your hands while you grip the book and read, and you become as one of El Monte's many flower pickers, stained and sometimes bleeding their own ink. The black, the outline of 53 and Baby Nostradamus, smudges like so many notes left on Merced de Papel, more so when wet. Either way you become one of those made of paper.

Bleeding ink is likely accidental, but intention doesn't matter.

What a fascinating book! I really enjoyed it, but I am having a hard time explaining why - or even what the book is really about. I started to wait a while to write this to see if more understanding would come from further reflection, but decided I wouldn't know more then than I do now.

Through use of magical realism, Plascencia places us in the middle of a fight between: the author; his characters; and his real world friends. And the author and real world friends are also characters in the book. Or the characters are real and the author + friends are characters. Or something like that. Or not.

My recommendation: 1. Read the book. 2. YOU try to describe it to someone (other than saying "Trust me. You'll like it." 3. Be very, very wary of turtles.

Trust me. You'll like it.

The aim of magical realism, like all fiction, is to find new, more accurate, ways to reflect real life--to show us ways to understand our own heartbreak and our own sorrow. Plascencia's novel is wonderfully inventive in doing just that. Not only does it have an interesting structure and many elements that are not seen in other texts (like the black blotches), but the style is also engaging and hard to get it out of your head. I loved it. I didn't want to finish it.

"The People of Paper" was listed as a top choice by one of the SF Chronicle's Book Review editors. The editor described the book by listing a few characters: a bed wetter, mechanical turtles, a war against Saturn, wandering monks, and a baby Nostradamus.

After reading this book, I now know why reviewers might find it so hard to nail this book down with only a few sentences. The reason is that this book is like no other. And when I use words like "Awesome. Incredible. Wow.", I find myself feeling like I'm cheating the book out of the praise it deserves.

I'm now a sworn fanatic of Salvador Plascencia for life, wish him only the best, and hope for many more novels to come.