Death Takes Me

This detective novel radically scrambles what we think of, and how we relate to, the genre ... The case [is] "full of psychological nooks and crannies. Of poetic shadows. Gender traps. Metaphors. Metonyms." That also describes Rivera Garza's exceptional style, and the deeply rewarding experience of reading Death Takes Me. The novel is dense and elliptical, a dreamscape with a powerful undertow ... [A] harrowing and labyrinthine masterpiece
A subversive twist on the traditional serial killer story
Rivera Garza, who won a Pulitzer prize last year for her memoir of femicide in Mexico, plays with form, blending fiction with an essay complete with footnotes, satirising media coverage, incorporating comments on the publication of the book we're reading, and generally having fun. Her exuberance is contagious. "Reading shouldn't be so complicated," says one character. "A matter of turning the page." Of course, it's both
When is a novel not a novel, and when is a novel more than a novel? Death Takes Me, the new novel by Cristina Rivera Garza, juggles these ideas and doesn't let them drop in a story that is part crime fiction, part poetry, part thesis and so many things besides ... All those genres and ways of thinking can be found in this book
Rivera Garza's dazzling prose here becomes sharper than ever . Obsessive, dreamlike and hallucinatory, Death Takes Me lingers inside your brain long after you've read it
An extraordinary, fiercely imaginative novel, written with the precision of a true master of her craft . I couldn't put it down
The novel brilliantly melds the grit and pacing of a police procedural with literary theory ... It's all seamlessly conveyed in Rivera Garza's incisive and poetic style. Life and literature become one in this singular achievement