A Puerto Rican student at a Paris university grapples with heartbreak and isolation in this compelling novel by the author of Simone.
The streets of Paris at night are pathways coursing with light and shadow, channels along which identity may be formed and lost, where the grand inflow of history, art, language, and thoughtโand of loveโcan both inspire and enfeeble. For the narrator of Eduardo Laloโs Uselessness, it is a world long desired. But as this young aspiring writer discovers upon leaving his home in San Juan to studyโto live and be rebornโin the city of his dreams, Parisโs twinned influences can rip you apart.
Laloโs first novel, Uselessness is something of a bildungsroman of his own student days in Paris. But more than this, it is a literary prรฉcis of his oeuvreโof themes that obsess him still. Told in two parts, Uselessness first follows our narrator through his romantic and intellectual awakenings in Paris, where he elevates his adopted home over the moribund one he has left behind. But as he falls in and out of love he comes to realize that as a Puerto Rican, he will always be apart. Ending the greatest romance of his lifeโthat with the city of Paris itselfโhe returns to San Juan. And in this new era of his life, he is forced to confront choices made, ambitions lost or unmetโto look upon lives not lived.
A tale of the travails of youthful romance and adult acceptance, of foreignness and isolation both at home and abroad, and of the stultifying power of the desire to belongโand to be movedโUselessness is here rendered into English by the masterful translator Suzanne Jill Levine. For anyone who has been touched by the disquieting passion of Paris, Uselessness is a stirring saga.
Praise for Uselessness
โIn this dreamy and succinct novel, Lalo takes readers on an intimate journey of companionship abroad. . . . This book is an important exploration of the Latin American experience in Europe. . . . Uselessness is a novel of modern plight thatโs brimming with hope and wisdom.โ โBooklist
โExploring the themes of love, isolation, and intellectual maturation, Uselessness will resonate with anyone who has fallen in love with Paris and its extravagant promises of romance and fulfillment.โ โRachel Cordasco, BookRiot
โWhat a powerful, bleak, and moving novel. It dwells on thingsโhuman insignificance, disappointment, compromise, failureโthat most books only gesture at.โ โRoss Posnock, Columbia University