Other Book Clubbers,
This is the first post by our new contributor - Haley! Here it is:
Did you enjoy 100 Years of Solitude? How about House of the Spirits? I did!
Did you, like me, find it difficult in both cases to keep track of the shifting plots, ghosts, genetic mysteries, with endlessly similar characters, names, and animals while finding both authors very pleasing nonetheless? Well do I have the novel, or should I say trilogy, that will knock your socks off.
By Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Correlli's Mandolin, the three novel series beginning with The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, is a wild fricassee of the most stimulating aspects of those better known stars of Latin American magical realism. The beauty of his work, at least in this trilogy, is the delicacy with which each aspect of the narrative is made inconsequential. The reader can proceed with calm serenity, knowing that all mysteries may be resolved in time. Even if they're not, the individual moments of beauty and hilarity inherent to de Bernières' unique style are satisfying on their own.
However, like his cohorts Allende and Marquez, de Bernières does not hesitate to lay bare the horrors of the South American colonial experience. The plot and characters are hung about with lighthearted asides and miraculous occurrences whilst at the centre of the story various helpless and guiltless individuals are abused and unjustly killed in horrific ways. Satisfyingly, though, de Bernières' villains meet their own justified ends, via methods so transparent and convoluted that you forget, perhaps, that those words combine to form what is traditionally referred to as an "oxymoron".
No comments:
Post a Comment