Review: Atmospheric, Disturbing. Clever.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 11, 2013
Crumple Zone has many layers.When Lara's normal life crumples, in love and work, she takes a trip to Chile and the dry, lonely Atacama Desert. Here the vast, barren landscape is the perfect setting to illustrate her desolate life. At the same time we meet the troubled trucker, Enrique, in an emotional crumple zone of his own. When their paths collide, another type of crumple zone, Lara and Enrique's physical and emotional journeys are woven together.From opposite cultures, both Lara and Enrique are recluses yearning to belong.  They are travellers seeking solace and protection, facing the same conflicts: commitment and the inability to commit; reality and illusion, love and loss. Dreams and illusions begin to crumple until finally, with Enrique's physical collapse, Reality itself crashes down with such force the reader is unprepared for the crushing impact.This is a clever novel and quite scary at times on physical and psychological levels. Edith Parzefall writes with authority, creating characters we care about, others we loathe, and takes us to a place many of us will never see. She shows us how, in the most unlikely situations, our very presence can make a real difference in a stranger's life and theirs in ours, for better or worse.Crumple Zone is atmospheric, visual, disturbing and a very satisfying read.