Books: October 2024
Lituma en los Andes — Mario Vargas Llosa
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Lituma en los Andes is a classic mystery novel following a cop stationed in a remote, highland mining town in Peru rumored to be at risk of capture by the Shining Path.
The basic idea works great: Vargas Llosa uses the mystery genre to set up a thick atmosphere of paranoia and vulnerability that captures what life in one of these towns might feel like. People are disappearing, there are rumors of insurgents who, any day now, will strike, but no one knows when or if it will happen. Seeing this from Lituma’s perspective, an urbanite Peruvian who is just as foreign as we are to the highlands, is great.
The town is beautifully rendered: the fast-shifting climate in the Andes, the terrifying/alive sierras, avalanches, the mining town where there is nothing to do but drink, where there’s this mix of new and old highland cultures.
I was curious going in how Vargas Llosa would handle writing about a left-wing group given his own well-known political views. Once you actually see the Shining Path (rather than sensing its presence), the book loses some of its power. But Vargas Llosa turns the camera away from the group and focuses on the town and its culture. In some ways, the message seems to be that there is something like ritualistic violence and paranoia built into the culture of the highlands. I don’t know if that’s the right reading, but that’s where I ended up. Loved it.
Temporada de huracanes — Fernanda Melchor
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Temporada de Huracanes is a novel about a poor Mexican town where a “witch” is murdered. Each chapter follows a different character (almost all kids) and their lives in this town.
Bolaño’s 2666 feels like a close cousin – not just the themes but the style. There are no paragraphs, barely any periods, just sentence after sentence separated by commas, the feeling is of hearing someone at times out of breath tell you the story of this town. The writing lands hard and can feel suffocating. I felt relieved when a chapter came to an end.
The story is so dark that I worried it would cheapen the book, but by the end I was convinced this was not the case. There is an extended description of child abuse near the middle that almost led me to put it down entirely.
The moral nihilism with which the characters approach their world reminded me of the movie Kids and some of Harmony Korine’s films. They make the same move: follow kids in objectively horrible situations characterized by poverty, drug abuse, social disorder. But rather than tell a sympathetic story about kids trapped by circumstances, what the book reveals about their interiority is mostly not good. There is a deep, antisocial pathology in their worldview, with some exceptions.
While this move can add realism (why wouldn’t living in these conditions produce antisocial nihilism?), there is also something that can feel ugly about painting life this way. The final chapter lets the reader rest, pulls back from the horror, so in the end it works.
Part of what’s interesting is that it upends a binary way people think about rural versus urban life in the developing world. There’s this view that life in rural areas is more traditional, more orderly, even if poorer. This book convincingly shows disorder can also be the norm in these communities.
Little Labors — Rivka Galchen
⭐⭐⭐ Little Labors is a series of essays and observations about being a new parent. The hardcover looks great: tiny book, attractive orange cover. I’ve seen it pitched as useful for people thinking about having a baby but I found it great as someone who already has one. And it really is about babies, not kids in general.
There are great bits that resonated with me. Early on she describes expecting her baby (whom she calls “puma” early on and other animal names as the baby ages) to be a kind of “sophisticated form of plant life” that she would only truly connect with once they were older. But the connection is immediate, “intoxicating.” The sense of feeling “suddenly older” once the baby arrives also hits home.
The non-memoir parts are like cultural studies for babies: interesting observations about how babies and mothers are depicted and the space they take up socially. For instance, she notes how few “mother writers” there are and claims the two most famous contemporary ones are probably Louis CK and Knausgaard. What’s up with that?
Fun, light, interesting read. A bit “MFA-ish” at times but a nice palette cleanser.