Among strange victims

the long version

"His tools are brilliant syntax, the ability to achieve highly powerful, recurrent images, a set of relationships between the plot strands that are more than a forced structure, and humor, a corrosive humor that never leads to laughter, but is present in every phrase of the book, charged with relentless sardonic irony."-FactorcriticoRodrigo likes his vacant lot, its resident chicken, and being left alone. But when passivity finds him accidentally married to Cecilia, he trades Mexico City for the sun-bleached desolation of his hometown and domestic life with Cecilia for the debauched company of a poet, a philosopher, and Micaela, whose allure includes the promise of time travel. Earthy, playful, and sly, Among Strange Victims is a psychedelic ode to the pleasures of not measuring--