The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Brilliant, simply brilliant. “The People of Paper” is about sadness and the tribulation of lost love (it is also about a man writing a book). The way the story is told is amazing, there is a blending between the characters stories and scenes told from multiple points of view. There are drawings, words cut out, black ink covering words (even whole paragraphs), some pages have paragraphs written in more than one direction (so you have to turn the book sideways to read), and part of the story is about the writer’s life (or at least the man writing the book in the story). It’s not as confusing as it sounds. It all makes for a wonderfully unusual reading experience. Everything that Salvador Plascencia does, moves the story forward and it gives the reader a real sense of the emotions the characters are experiencing.
As I was reading “The People of Paper” two other books kept coming to mind and neither because of plot, the first was “The Breakfast of Champions” by Kurt Vonnegut, because of the brilliance and the quirkiness of the story. The second book that kept coming to mind was “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss, because of the level of emotional depth. Both books are among my favorites.
I highly recommend this book, especially to Vonnegut fans.
monkspoint 