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book review

'Scars' by Juan Jose Saer

By Richard Eder

 |   

  December 25, 2011

For most of its length, Saer’s “Scars’’ is an anti-book, populated by anti-characters living out anti-stories and told in a kind of anti-writing. There is a reason for it: a last section of such grisly and brilliantly written realism as to declare, in effect, that life in the world is so bad that non-life is the only proper way to convey it. The first three sections of “Scars’’ are written so as to destroy themselves.

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