While searching for a title on the library shelf, I came across one that sounded interesting - How I Became a Nun. I picked up the slender book, and the cover with a young girl eating a bright pink ice cream. My interest peaked, so I read. I was not expecting César Aira, or his unique story.
How I became a nun takes place in Rosario, Argentina. Our protagonist and narrator is a child named César Aira who refers to themself as both a boy and girl at different times. She (or he, though predominately she, so I'll use that pronoun here) exists in her head and only occasionally visits reality. A world of games, streams of description and wonder, and insight far beyond the average 6yr old abounds in her head, even as she sits in stillness listening to the radio. The outside world sees her as dumb and retarded, blind of the landscape she has created for herself. César's thoughts stream past in a manner similar to Salinger, and take on a hue of the other side of the looking glass. It is the surreal world of a little girl.
When the novel begins, the writing is clear and what one expects. César and her father are on an outing to get ice cream, which César has never tried. The excitement of sharing the treat with her father is dashed when the cold substance tastes too fowl to even lie about. Aira's descriptions are thick and wild and perfect. The reader tastes the foulness for themselves. After tears, arguing, and melted pink getting on everything, the father finds that there is something wrong with the ice cream and confronts the chap at the counter about it. This confrontation leads to the ice cream clerk's death - suffocation by strawberry. After, the father goes to jail and César to the hospital - the ice cream was tainted with cyanide, part of an epidemic in the area. The child survives the poisoning, and we are treated to the wild feverish recollections of a 6yr old in a hospital ward.
It is after the poisoning that the child's imaginations and narrations go down the rabbit hole. Cesar's games and observations only flirt with reality. Whether in school or playing with her neighbor she is constantly on the verge of drama and extreme. No emotion exists in the moderate.
Though a bit confusing, and not at all a traditional narrative, How I became a Nun is a worthwhile and interesting read.
