Customer comments on this Youngstown Ohio Book
 Ably translated from Spanish for an English reading audience
62: A Model Kit is ably translated from Spanish for an English reading audience by Gregory Rebassa and is a novel of fantasy, comedy, cities, snatches of conversations, brief meetings, characters whose lives begin at any moment and end in intense, brilliant encounters with others on a train, poignant love making, and even restaurant dining. The construction is free and open, devoid of the usual restraints of traditional novelistic order and take the reader on a daring and exciting new approach to life itself. 62: A Model Kit written so deftly and daringly by the late Julio Cortazar (1914-1984) is enthusiastically recommended reading for anyone with an interest in pushing the literary envelope as exemplified by the format of the novel.
 Gimmicky at Best!
This book builds to less then nothing (for nothing can sometimes actually be exciting). Cortazar is impressive, no doubt, but his stuff is at its core is just gimmicks and mindtricks. No real substance. He writes like someone merely trying to impress his peers in his creative writing class, and maybe get laid by that cute girl in the corner. To say he influenced writers like Marquez elevates him too much. Marquez likely saw what Cortazar lacked and built on it from there. Fun to read like it's fun watching a magician, but that's as far as it goes.
Welcome to strange familiarity
To summarize this book would be to discredit it. It must be read by anyone who is interested in the quirks and subtleties that haunt human action. It is not intended as a book of horror, or a humorous book for that matter, but this is what one will find in the most honest and purest sense of the words. The author would be scandalized by the application of such sentimental terms, but as I am not Mr. Cortazar, I am afraid this is the best I can do.
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