What a strange and haunting first novel! A novel that is a poem. Luiselli deftly interweaves the impressions of three first person narrators: a mother raising two children in Mexico City; that same mother, younger, as a translator in New York; and the Mexican poet Gilberto Owen. Time and events become more and more conflated as the book moves on, with ghosts, literature, buildings, people, cats, and objects appearing in each other's stories. It is truly a "horizontal novel, told vertically."

The author explores language, literature, holes, architecture, and cities in this breathtaking little book that I will think about for a long while.