"The Story of My Teeth" by Valeria Luiselli (2015)

"By the year 2011, Mexicans had lost their minds.  Everybody was at war with everybody else, and there was a general climate of antagonism and bitterness - a sense of living on the verge of calamity.  It had been some time since I'd been summoned to call an auction.  I believe this was because Mexicans are also like crabs in a bucket, and this needs no further explanation.  My skills languished, unused.  I had also stopped travelling, principally because I'd realized that despite the Mexicans, who make every possible effort to ruin everything, Mexico is glorious."

And that paragraph is the best part of the book.  YOU'RE WELCOME.  Saved you a lot of time, didn't I?

The rest of it?  Eh, it's OK.  Very forgettable.  Even now, an hour after finishing it, I can't really tell you what most of it's about.  There's a guy named Highway who has a thing for teeth.  There are a few shorter stories framed in the context of an auction.  There are a lot of quirky asides that lead nowhere.  In an afterword the author tries to defend/explain her work.  I'm not sure I'm buying that defense/explanation.

Reading this book won't take up much of your time.  You could read it.  Or not.  There are better books by other Mexican authors though.  Much, much better.

Related Entries:

"The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu (2016)
"Libra" by Don Delillo (1988)
"Choke" by Chuck Palahniuk (2001)
"Purity" by Jonathan Franzen (2015)