Review: Talking to Ourselves

Talking to Ourselves, a sad little tale from Argentina, is told in three distinct voices: a mortally ill man, his adoring son and his adulterous but loving wife. The three narrators, as they alternately confide in the reader, are all vulnerable, flawed, likable people who both hurt and love one another.

Mario is saying goodbye to his life, but is determined to go on one road trip with his son. Once a beautiful man, he's now losing weight and dopey on painkillers. His son, Lito, is convinced awesome things start happening when you turn 10, like this long-promised trip, making deliveries to dozens of out-of-the-way villages. Deceived by his father's cheerful lies, the boy has no idea the man is dying. Young Lito is having the time of his life, drinking Fanta in a motel with hookers and using his magic powers (he believes) to make the weather change. Elena is not happy about her son going on this dangerous trip with her ailing husband. Though she loves Mario deeply, she no longer desires him. The last time they had sex was the day Mario found out he was dying. She goes to see his doctor to confront him and find out how sick her husband really is. Unexpectedly, the doctor asks her out to dinner and they begin a savagely passionate affair.

The main voice belongs to Elena, a teacher, always reading and pondering books by her favorite modern authors--Banville, Woolf, Atwood, Bolaño, Marías. But the rapport between father and son on adventure is the heart of the novel--their exchanges, as the father hides his diminishing health, are so full of loving humor that the joy of the episodes bleeds into the rest of this melancholy meditation on losing a loved one.

It's excruciatingly sad stuff: honest, simple and non-manipulative. According to Neuman, the one true event in life is loss. Health and sickness are two "countries that are mutually suspicious of each other," and grief "spreads through the memory like an environmental disaster." His novel has the double-edged emotional impact of all true loving--the joy of connection, the equal and inescapable anguish of saying goodbye. --Nick DiMartino

Shelf Talker: A dying Argentine man takes his 10-year-old son on a road trip in this short, exquisitely sad novel told in three voices: husband, wife and son.

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