I've been trying to read more literary fiction, and Distant Star was on a cart outside a local used bookstore (my kryptonite). This novel is nominal about the relationship between the unnamed narrator and Carlos Wieder. Wieder infiltrated the narrator's student poetry workshop under an assumed name, and each chapter reveals a new and uncanny element to Wieder's personality: The aspiring poet, the Peronist hatchetman, the truly brilliant aviator, the avante-garde poet who skywrites his messages on the most insubstantial medium of them all, the hidden literary figure publishing under assumed names, the vicious serial killer using politics as an excuse for his crimes.

The novel loops elliptically through biographies of lies, alternative selves under different conditions, and the twinned meanings of art and crime and meaning itself. It's well crafted, breezy, yet clever. But ultimately, not my cup of tea. I may pause my project to improve my reading habits.