Ema, the Captive by César Aira
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have a secret list of words that evoke vision. I should have added to it while reading this, because I kept going, “Oh, that’s a good one!” Aira writes very beautifully. He makes Argentina seem like a fantastical dreamland, like Xanadu or Samarkand or El Dorado.
I think this might not be a novel, but rather a lengthy pastoral poem.
I think the key to the aesthetic of this book is that nobody in it ever needs anything. For instance, money is an important part of the book but nobody ever needs it. They smoke lots of cigarettes and drink from many different bottles, but nobody ever buys tobacco or alcohol. They hunt for food, or get it, without trading, from other people who have it. They live in houses because the houses are there, but sometimes not. Near the end Ema gets a loan to start a business, but the terms are 0.5 percent interest for 300 years; and she doesn’t need the business, and her workers don’t need jobs.
There are no diseases in this book. Even in situations where there really, really ought to be. There’s one mention of a blind man, but I’ll bet he was born that way.
It’s mostly about “Indians”, and its portrayal of them is deliberately fantastical in a way that seems to me to be more than half thought experiment; so now you know that.
Anyway, something is going on in this book and it’s mysterious in the best way. Maybe the people are all actually pheasants. No really, I actually think that might be what the book is about. It’s also possible that Ema was deeply traumatized prior to the start of the book and it’s all one years-long dissociative episode characterized by emotional detachment. Those are my two best theories.
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