It is to me that we owe our immortality, and this is the story that proves it beyond all doubt.” With this sentence René Belletto begins a novel that compresses every genre he has worked
inthriller, science fiction, experimental literature, horrorinto one breathless narrative in which what is at stake is nothing less than our own immortality.
Playing with the expectations of the reader, Belletto constructs a logical puzzle that defies logic, much like the almost-perpetual motion machine” invented by the narrator of this novel
and his father. What sets the story in (perpetual) motion is a package of frozen seafood. This lowly mechanism triggers a series of picaresque and otherworldly events, from the
storyteller’s meeting with Fate disguised as a beautiful woman, to the kidnapping of his daughter, to his amorous reunion with the younger half-sister of a high school friend, to the
elimination of death from the world. It’s a funny business, but Belletto’s playful and falsely transparent language opens the book to such serious matters as explorations of death,
immortality, love, and the innocence of children.
