The Story of My Teeth, Valeria Luiselli
The Story of My Teeth, Valeria Luiselli
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The Story of My Teeth

Author: Valeria Luiselli, Christina MacSweeney

Narrator: Armando Durán, Thom Rivera

Unabridged: 4 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/15/2015

Synopsis

The story of “Highway” Sánchez—bon vivant, world traveler, auctioneer—and his teeth is like Johnny Cash meets Robert Walser in Mexico.“I was born in Pachuca, the Beautiful Windy City, with four premature teeth and my body completely covered in a very fine coat of fuzz. But I’m grateful for that inauspicious start because ugliness, as my other uncle, Eurípides López Sánchez, was given to saying, is character forming.”Gustavo “Highway” Sánchez Sánchez is a late-in-life world traveler, yarn spinner, collector, and legendary auctioneer. His most precious possessions are the teeth of the “notorious infamous,” like Plato, Petrarch, and Virginia Woolf.Written in collaboration with the workers at a Jumex juice factory, The Story of My Teeth is an elegant, witty, exhilarating romp through the industrial suburbs of Mexico City and Luiselli’s own literary influences.

About Valeria Luiselli

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. In 2014 she was honored as part of the National Book Foundation’s list of “5 under 35.” Her debut novel, Faces in the Crowd, earned rave reviews and won the Los Angeles Times’ 2015 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Luiselli’s fiction and essays have been translated into many languages, and her work has appeared in such publications as Granta, McSweeney’s, and the New York Times

About Christina MacSweeney

Christina MacSweeney has an MA in literary translation from the University of East Anglia. She has translated Valeria Luiselli’s novel Faces in the Crowd and collection of essays, Sidewalks. She has also contributed to a wide variety of literary magazines and websites, including McSweeney’s, Brick magazine, and Granta.

About Armando Durán

Armando Durán has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the resident acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2009 he was named by AudioFile as Best Voice in Biography and History for his narration of Che Guevara. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon.

Reviews

Goodreads review by s.penkevich

My luck was without equal, my life was a poem, and I was certain that one day, someone was going to write the beautiful tale of my dental autobiography. Literature has a unique role in the discussions of truth and ideas. When we tell a story we dress the themes and messages up in an elegant wardrobe......more

Goodreads review by Baba

A well written, and clever novel centred around the life of a Mexican auctioneer and his teeth! Originally written in Spanish. An innovative piece of collaboration with real input from a Mexican factory workers' reading club, and the translator, gives this work its remarkable feel of authenticity! A......more

Goodreads review by Rae

I think I was really taken with the title of this one, but I probably should have read more about it. It really wasn't for me. I found it mildy amusing at best and really just finished it to finish it. It fits into a tradition of Latin American surrealist/absurdist literature--and I like the story b......more

Quotes

“The Story of My Teeth explores the meaning of home through the antics of an auctioneer, told in his own hyperbolic fashion.” BBC.com

“Luiselli is as much a cartographer as a writer, interested in finding areas still unmapped…She combines fictional narrative with historical and intellectual points of reference, and the result is writing without preconceptions, as airy and open as a soccer field.” New York Times Book Review

“Quirky doesn’t begin to capture the wacky inventiveness of Valeria Luiselli’s second novel. The Story of My Teeth is a playful, philosophical funhouse of a read that demonstrates that not only isn’t experimental fiction dead, it needn’t be deadly, either. Luiselli’s elastic mind comfortably stretches to wrap itself around molars, Montaigne, fortune cookies and various theories of meaning.” NPR

“This kind of writing—direct and gentle, affectionate and satirical, precise and imaginative, memorable and efficient—appears throughout, and the character of Gustavo is brought to life with exquisite imaginative power and beautifully judged tics and cadences…It is a sad, beautiful, and brilliant book. It will endure.” National (Abu Dhabi)

“Quirky and charming, The Story of My Teeth is a delightful meditation on art, value, and truth.” BuzzFeed.com

“The Story of My Teeth has a Joycean playfulness with words, events, structure, literary theory, languages, and human nature.” Midwest Book Review

“Surprising and charming…It’s difficult not to follow wherever it takes you.” Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)

“A lively, loopy experimental novel rich with musings on language, art, and, yes, teeth…The whole book is a kind of extended commentary on how possessions acquire value largely through the stories we tell about them….A clever philosophical novel that, as the author puts it, has ‘less to do with lying than surpassing the truth.’” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A fiercely intelligent, inventive, and hilarious exploration of worth, value, and creation in the worlds of art and literature.” Bookanista

“The novel’s experimental structure is full of literary allusions and bon mots from across the ages. Readers hungry for more from Luiselli will be happy with a clever variation on her style.” Library Journal

Awards

  • Millions.com Pick
  • BuzzFeed Books Pick
  • Kirkus Prize
  • Publishers Weekly Best Book
  • Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books
  • A Flavorwire Pick
  • New York Times Book Review Notable Book
  • NPR’s Great Reads
  • National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee
  • Los Angeles Times Book Prize
  • Best Translated Book Award
  • Literary Hub Pick
  • Wired Magazine Pick
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