The people of paper

"As Federico’s feelings of resentment and anger towards Saturn become both more resentful and more rebellious, he gathers a small army of followers who, in their own ways, have experiences that fall into the realm of “magic realism” and who, like Federico, wish to free themselves of Saturn’s influence. These followers include Froggy (the aforementioned co-worker who spat flower petals); Julieta (who, narration suggests, caused the destruction of her home town simply by crumbling a bullion cube); and Smiley, whose curiosity about Saturn leads him on a journey into the sky. That journey ends with Smiley tearing a hole in the sky, going through, and discovering that Saturn is, in fact, a writer named Salvador Plascencia, who is having some struggles in his personal life; who feels the resentment and anger of Federico and the other characters he has created; and who doesn’t want to give up his control of those characters, but at the same time doesn’t want to fight with them. Smiley returns to the world he (as a character) inhabits with a sense of empathy for the writer and a determination to no longer antagonize him as part of Federico’s rebellion."--

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.