SOLITAIRE OF LOVE

The anatomy of a love affair preoccupies this overheated, rather underimagined 1988 novel from the Uruguayan-born author (who now lives in Spain) of Dostoevsky’s Last Night (1995). Its unnamed narrator broods over the addictive nature (which he’ll eventually compare to gambling mania) of his obsession with Aida, a morose divorcée who accepts and partners his infatuated attentions before tiring of them, and dumping him. Both the brute physicality and the fugue-like abstractedness of erotomania are repeatedly examined, in a numbingly grave little jeu that seems much longer than its actual page count. Maybe it’s a Uruguayan thing.