Personae

Personae is a less a novel than a fragmentary collection of essays, memories, transcripts, and a very long play-within-a-novel, all loosely structured around a detective procedural narrative. The story may not add up to much (and too many of the characters are undeveloped, especially the lead detective, Helen Tame), but Sergio de la Pava’s prose is dense and witty, and the book’s fragments are an aphoristic delight.