Review
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Entropy, “Best of 2017: Best Fiction Books”
“Within the deliberately fractured text, themes echo and time
folds and unfolds. A spare, artfully constructed meditation on
loss, both personal and national.” —Kirkus
“Gerber Bicecci’s experimental novel takes a unique approach to
topics like debilitating loneliness, political repression, and
epistemological crises.” —Publishers Weekly
“This is a novel to puzzle over as its episodes, which are not
chronological, align and create points of reference that allow
readers to decipher Verónica’s story just as she herself
does.” —Booklist
“A smart story of love and loss with a clever mix of narrative
techniques, Empty Set may be an antidote to the current climate
of despair.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
“A wonderfully kaleidoscopic novel—so inventive, thought
provoking, and offbeat.” —Chicago Review of Books
“Empty Set is a visceral and lucid story and also an art
object.” —Literary Hub
“[A]n experimental mix of prose, diagrams and literary artifacts
that is also, somehow, breathlessly plotted.” —Star Tribune
“Who knew a half-drawn, half-achronological narrative with
considerations of time and space and loss and love could be so
fun, so easy to devour?” —Atticus Reviews
“Verónica Gerber writes with a luminous intimacy; her novel is
clever, vibrant, moving, profoundly original. Reading it made me
feel as if the world had been rebuilt.” —Francisco Goldman
“Gerber Bicecci's sentences (and MacSweeney's translation) run as
clear as spring water and are a joy to take in, from start to
finish.” —Shelf Awareness, starred review
“Empty Set(ES) belongs to the set of Great Fragmentary
Novels(GFN), which in turn fits plainly and simply within the set
of Great Novels(GN). Verónica Gerber writes with the modesty and
care of those who may seem to belong more to the set of Visual
Artists(VA) than Writers(W)—each fragment is a precious miniature
that exudes subtle, melancholy humor.” —Juan Pablo Villalobos
“I can’t say I’ve ever read anything like it—a novel, sure, but
with the spirit (and sometimes the form) of poetry, or linked
short stories, along with drawings and a fascinating epilogue on
how it was translated.” —Chicago Review of Books
“The pure pleasure of this book is being inside our heroine
Vero’s head: the way she Venns relationships like an
autodentrochonologist, someone who has serious questions about
plywood, but also about exile, Argentina, and the kind of
loneliness that accompanies being part of an empty set.” —The
Rumpus
“Empty Set is a poignant consideration of displacement, and a
haunting search for a set of conditions in which we may feel
whole.”—The Riveter
“Empty Set nails a sharp melancholy.” —Matador Review
“In Empty Set, Verónica Gerber Bicecci has found a seemingly new
and fascinating way to tell and show us a vital story of modern
loneliness, exile, and imagination.” —Words Without Borders
“Consistently innovative and heartrendingly reflective, Bicecci
provides a satisfying slice-of-life story despite leaving so much
unanswered. . . . Here is a reluctant testament to the fact that
beginnings and ends are never as streamlined as we would like
them to be; life is riddled with false starts and false summits,
and exists only in the border lines that must be drawn to become
visible.” —Arkansas International
“A subtle narrative wrapped up in a unique reading experience
about loneliness, where the short, fragmented text, and simple,
black-and-white drawings echo the subject matter
perfectly.” —Remezcla
“An intriguing way of interrogating language.” —Signature Reads
“As she works through the disappearance of her mother, two
heartbreaks, and the archives of a revision-obsessed novelist,
Verónica engages in a playful reordering of space on the page:
Characters are assigned variables, their relationships to one
another expressed through diagrams and patterns. Sketches related
to Verónica’s preoccupations (including triangles, Venn diagrams,
and forests and ice cores as historical archives) are also
dispersed throughout the text as Gerber Bicceci explores the
limitations of language and the bittersweet nature of incremental
change.”—Unabridged Bookstore
“How do you render negative space, and if you can accurately
describe it, is it really negative? Gerber Bicecci revels in
these quandaries and pushes them through all manner of
expression: visual, mathematical, linguistic.” —Full Stop
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About the Author
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Verónica Gerber Bicecci: Verónica Gerber Bicecci is a visual
artist who writes. In 2013 she was awarded the third Aura Estrada
prize for literature. She is an editor with Tumbona Ediciones, a
publishing cooperative with a catalogue that explores the
intersections between literature and art.
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