By blinking his eyes and moving his pupils, a paraplegic man-the onetime vocalist in a famous rock band-composes a kind of anti-biography that is corrected and expanded upon by an unknown editor. Alternating between the vocalist's impressionistic recollections and the editor's "corrections," an asynchronous story emerges, evoking the vocalist's childhood in southern Chile and telling of the rise and fall of the band that he grew up to lead, while hinting at a multiplicity of other narrative possibilities.
"[W]hat we encounter in Loquela is a skillful unmaking-complete with diary excerpts, missives from beyond the grave and an invented barn-burning manifesto on a literary movement, 'Corporalism,' which seeks to breathe life into the 'corpse' of literature-that manages to offer new ways of thinking about what the novel can do."
Laird Hunt, L.A. Times
"[Loquela] is drenched in the spirit of experimentality, dry and absurd humor, strangeness and intrigue."
Simone Wolff, Bookslut
"Navidad & Matanza could be the hallucinogenic amalgamation of a César Aira plot with setting and characters conceived by Bolaño if written using Oulipo-style constraints. . . With ample imagination and commanding style, Navidad & Matanza certainly marks Labbé as a young author from whom we ought to anticipate great, fascinating things to come."
