I am not usually a person that likes to know much about a novel before reading it; I enjoy going in blind, maybe knowing a little word-of-mouth, a thing or two, and just skimming the back cover for keywords. When I'm in a bookstore, I read the first sentence to know if I want to buy it. I even skip introductions in books if they are not part of the fictional story (I read them after I've finished!).

However, upon reading Luiselli's afterword in THE STORY OF MY TEETH, I wish I had known just a little bit about how she crafted this novel at the outset. I mean, it says it right there on the description, I just never read the full description. It's a novel told in parts, and was written in parts, as commissioned by a Mexican juice factory's... art gallery. Luiselli would send her story of a man named Gustavo "Highway" Sanchez Sanchez in chapbooks to the gallery, and would hear the factory workers reading it and discussing it. Then she would send the next part, organically growing her novel with the input from the workers, part by part. There's more to it, and it's all in the great afterword, but upon reaching this understanding, my mouth was definitely agape, and I wanted to listen to it all over again!

The story itself seems a little disorienting and confounding at first--why are we hearing Highway's story? The narration is wonderful and cinematic, and carried me along even though I wasn't quite sure what was going on at times. I surely laughed a lot, and there were moments of sadness. It all becomes clear in one of the later chapters, and this translation from the Spanish also includes a part written solely by the translator, Christina MacSweeney--also completely fascinating why Luiselli wanted the translator to be part of the novel. A collaborative effort for art.

This was certainly up my art+books lovin' alley, though I'm not sure everyone will have as pleasurable an experience as I did.