pickThis was good! 4.5⭐
Cristoff spends time in small towns in the Patagonian meseta (plateau lands), getting to know the rhythms of life and the locals, staying long enough to become a recognisable, if temporary, community feature to whom people open up about their lives.
Cristoff augments testimony with some historical research and, probably, a degree of literary licence, which coheres into a picture of brittle lives dwarfed by a vast landscape, ⬇️
"Haikus of horror":
An evocative phrase, but -
children are dying.
#HaikuHive
With apologies that my first entry is rather grim.
Is being trapped under a cat sufficient reason for calling emergency services? #CatsOfLitsy #Caturday
Luckily, Skye has trapped me with the tagged book, which I'm really enjoying. Cristoff merges travelog with her literary perspective on the lives of the ordinary people she meets, with vignettes of Patagonian history, relating these to the books she's reading.
Hearing of the mass murders of immigrant Arab traders in the 1900s by bandits who ⬇️
"My father was born in the middle of Patagonia, but everybody around him spoke Bulgarian."
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl
Next up, "False Calm" by María Sonia Cristoff, the title of which has me on edge! ? It's suggestive of emotional undertow and brittle tension.
It's a travelogue \ reportage \ revisiting of her Patagonian homeland, specifically seeking out the less populous, less thriving, more isolated and ailing towns.
Adjectives from the blurbs included: magical, intimate, humane, bold, beautiful, artful, atmospheric. I hope it lives up to expectations ?
pickMaria Sonia Cristoff was born and raised in Patagonia. She returns to tour the area, visiting mostly decaying towns along the way. She tells their stories not by describing the towns, but largely through individual stories. It‘s an interesting, unusual little book and I mostly enjoyed it, though the final piece doesn‘t hang together well.
#bookspinbingo
‘And then, with time, I have been able to survive each and every one of my visits thanks to the books I bring with me to read …‘ ( p. 148) #reading #travel #visiting #books #falsecalm
False Calm: A Journey Through the Ghost Towns of Patagonia | 
There's a hint of David Lynch in the 'dark suburbiana' tone, and of Philip K. Dick in the ordinariness of Cristoff's Everyperson protagonists. The darkness is sometimes in the historical antecedents of the region, including banditry, colonialism and cannibalism, and sometimes contemporary in the domestic ⬇️ 1mo
Approach with caution, but do approach. 1mo