The 351 Books of Irma Acuri

I found this book to be elegant, beautiful and simply impossible to put down. There is a lot of sex, but don't let that deter you - it's aspirational, but really conveys the mood. Other reviewers have stated all this more thoroughly and better than me, but I just wanted to chime in and say that relying on the previous positive reviews was, for me, a good move.

This was a beautiful and dreamy novel about books and the human desire for those things that elevate us. I was drawn in by the story, held by the language, and left inspired by the ideas. Highly recommened.

I hesitated to start this book because it came to me through a friend who met the author, and usually books that arrive through those kind of channels aren't my cup of tea. I was also worried about the mathematics in the book, either that it would be a convenient gimmick or that the math would bog down the story. The cover was intriguing, though, and the book had a blurb from a writer I really like, so I gave it a try and I'm really glad I did. First of all, the use of math was very well done. It was complex but not complicated, and it was integral to the story. The main character is something of a math genius who uses formulas and numbers to understand the world, but this approach fails him when he tries to understand people. He can tell you what percentage of time a particular person answers the phone or how many nouns to verbs someone uses, but he can't tell you why people act like they do. At one point his ex-wife is angry at him because he isn't angry at her for something he should be (makes sense in the book, but hard to explain here) and he says, more or less, "at least I know why I'm supposed to be." This is a big improvement for him. It seems that this lack of emotional understanding is part of why Irma Arcuri has disappeared and why she has left Philip her library. He tries to use math to work through the books, but he finds he has to use the language of words. In that way, the book makes a case for literature, and Philip does fall under the spell of stories. But that's just one thread in an elegantly woven tapestry. There are a lot of ideas at work here, but it's also a good story (almost a mystery, full of clues for bibliophiles) about a man searching for a woman he loves, trying to find her physically while seeking to understand who she is and what they have had together. The book is also good on place, especially Seville and Philadelphia. The author really captures these cities, but he also makes them into something more, and I won't ever think about them in quite the same way. In that sense, the book really does create a world of its own, with its own logic and geography. Sometimes people say a book is "thought-provoking" in the same way they say an unattractive blind date is "interesting," but this book is thought-provoking in the very best sense. There is a lush quality to the writing that makes the book beautiful but not at all dumbed-down. The more I think about it, the more profound it is, and Irma Arcuri has become a real presence for me.

I read this book after reading the glowing L.A. Times review and found that reading it was like falling in love. At first there's the astonishment, then the infatuation, then the deeper fascination. That may sound silly, but it is a book about love--and a book about the love of books. It's thick with ideas, and yet I found it to be a page turner. I was pulled along by the mysteries, the characters, and even the writing itself. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves books, either as objects or for what's in them--readers, writers, collectors, librarians, book designers and restorers, and so on. It's also about sex. Really about it. David Bajo is one of the few contemporary writers I have come across who is writing about sex directly, provocatively, and intelligently without draining the eroticism. This is a hot book, but never gratuitous or juvenile. I'm going to wait awhile, but I plan to read it again fairly soon--both because it's rich in ideas and because it's a pleasurable read.