By neuropoeta on Skatehive
It was some friends who put it in my hands with a "this will blow your mind, but in a good way," and they certainly weren't lying because The Hair of Venus came to me as a recommendation over drinks and has ended up being one of those books that changes the way you look at a blank page. I confess I had never read anything like it, and I don't say that as a cliché, but with the bewilderment of someone who opens a door and discovers that there is not a hallway, but an entire forest. Sishkin, that Russian writer based in Switzerland, managed to build a novel that seems to defy all the rules I took for granted. At times it seems like a love story, but also a diary, a botanical treatise, an essay on language, and a collection of letters that will never arrive on time. The structure is the first thing that unsettles you because there is no single narrator to hold your hand, just fragments and overlapping voices. There is a translator who receives letters from his beloved from the distant pas