Flashback Hotel

Impressionistic, surreal, an examination of life in Cape Town under apartheid unlike any I've ever read before. Not always easy to read, and not for those who demand linear fiction.

fantastic novel from a tried and true author -- keenly observant author and a virtuoso of the sentence -- highly recommended reading

When reviewing Ivan Vladislavić's latest collection of short stories words like surreal, absurd, bizarre, fantastical and weird immediately come to mind. In many of the stories you are placed in a world that has some recognisable elements of reality about it but one that also occupies the outer reaches of the imaginative mind. Vladislavic's forte is combining fantasy to historic events signifying meanings often but not exclusively defined within a post apartheid South African context.

He has a distinctive style and voice that can play around with concepts taking them at times to absurdist conclusions. You are never quite sure at what level of reality you are dealing with. It is has been stated that his work can be partly understood as a way of understanding and coming to terms with the society around him and this can be seen through a number of the stories here.

I counted twenty two short stories here, all of variable length and each have a unique quality and individualism about them. I must admit that the two I most enjoyed were arguably two (to this reader anyway) of the more accessible ones being The Book Lover and "Kidnapped"

I fully admit that this may not be to everyone's taste and it certainly requires a degree of concentration by the reader as one concept interchanges with another and there is no certainty as to how the story will develop and end. If you are looking for straight forward narratives with neat conclusions with all the ends tied up this is not for you. But if you want to experience something different that will take you into territory occupied by the likes of Breton, Kafka and Ballard and are prepared to exercise your thought processes then I would recommend this.

Ivan Vladislavic is a new author to me. I had never heard of him, and he was most definitely a pleasant surprise. This collection of short stories, a combination of two previously released collections, is incredible in scope and breadth. The stories range between sort of straight-forward psychological fiction, like "The Prime Minister is Dead", "The Book Lover" and "The Firedogs" to the magical realism of stories like, "The Box," where a man grabs the Prime Minister through his television and so now the PM is missing and he has a 6 inch tall version of him running around the house, and "When My Hands Burst Into Flames," which is just how it sounds. There are some stories that I could not get into but there are more that just blew me away.

The thing with the collection is that it is time consuming. The reading is slower than normal, and there are a few stories that I had to just slog my way through. However the majority of the time, I was captured by these stories, and Vladislavic does not give any indication as to where his stories are going to end. They are not predictable at all, and this kept my interest even though some of the reading is very slow. Even when I did not really get into the story, I enjoyed the writing and structures. He is one of those authors that you want to hang onto every word he writes, even if you aren't too interested in what he is saying. This quality is so rare I can only think of a handful of other authors that possess this talent. As it is, I will be looking for more of Ivan Vladislavic's work in the future.

I received this as an ARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Never come across Ivan Vladislavic before so this was a wonderful introduction. The stories in this collection range from the absurd to the downright bizarre and their often predictable in their unpredictability. It also helped that Vladislavic is a rather gifted writer and his prose is a genuine pleasure to read.

While a couple of the stories didn't quite hit the mark, which is to be expected within a short story collection, I honestly can't say there was a bad one in here.

Recommended.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

A Lovely Selection

Short story collections are almost always a mixed bag of treats, but the stories in this book really span an exceptionally wide spectrum.

Don't be put off by the first few stories. They are absurd, surreal, and consist almost entirely of short sentences, floating clauses, and snippets of random observations. They were interesting enough to skim, but I feared that an entire double book collection of such postmodern fancy would exhaust my patience. Fortunately, the book settles down considerably from that point on. We still have the absurd and the surreal, and some arresting word play and action, but the narratives are less meta and experimental, and there is usually something coherent and pointed going on behind the scenes.

It's worth noting that almost all of the stories address, in one fashion or another, post-apartheid South Africa, and while it's always fairly clear what's going on, some familiarity with the details of South African politics and modern history would help the reader get the most out of the stories. On the other hand, for example, the bitterly amusing tale of museum bureaucrats searching for an "authentic" white's only bench for their post-apartheid museum is sly and funny no matter how little you know of the specifics of South African politics and political culture.

For what it's worth, my favorite story, "The Book Lover", is a charming and tender tale of a book collector's obsession with searching book sales and book shops in order to collect all of the hand me down books distributed from a mysterious woman's apparently dissolved personal library. He follows bookmarks, photos, and other ephemera that he finds left over or tucked into various volumes in his search for the mysterious source. In this story we abandon the surreal and the overtly political and just have an opportunity to enjoy a carefully crafted tale of the different forms of love and desire.

So, an interesting collection for sure, with a bit of something for everyone, and many happy possibilities.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)