Throughout the course of reading this book, I found my feelings about it fluctuate. Some of the writing really shone, the imagery was often vivid, occThroughout the course of reading this book, I found my feelings about it fluctuate. Some of the writing really shone, the imagery was often vivid, occasionally brilliant, but I think this book suffered from being over-written. The novel is structured around 6 stories, some very short and some very lengthy, with varying stamina.
The first follows Juan the father and his son Gaspar on a roadtrip through the Argentine pampas to the son's maternal family's villa. The air is heavy with menace, fear, mystery during the years of dictatorship in Argentina - which do not much affect the wealthy Reyes family, their medium (Juan) or the young scion Gaspar. Throughout the trip, the reader can begin to piece together the story of this family which acquired its wealth in "the usual way" - through exploitation and deception, but beneath the veneer of wealth there is something ever more sinister - through mediums this family contacts the Darkness, a satanic force, feeds him sacrifices, and hopes to be given the secret to immortality though a kind of transubstantiation. Juan, despite being son-in-law, has a both servile and rarefied position in the family, as the acting medium. He suffers from severe complications of the heart, apparently frequent in those born with this gift. He begins to see signs of this same gift in his son, and devotes to protect him from the family.
The second section is a very short story of the discovery of Juan by the Reyes family doctor, his purchase of him from his poor family, and the role he comes to play as the family's eventual medium. This section was a highlight in terms of story-telling, perspective.
The next section, comprising about a third of the novel, brings us into the 80's, nearly a decade after the first section, and focusses on the perspective of Gaspar and his group of friends: young gay man Pablo, middle class girl Vicky, and amputee Adela. This section really sags in pacing - each short chapter tries to maintain the sinister atmosphere of the first section, and what is left unsaid (Juan's experience, contact with the Reyes family) is a tangible gap. Many small mostly quotidian episode between the friends drag the narrative without meaningfully contributing much to the story or philosophical ideas. The politics of the era are obliquely referenced, but overall this section felt like a short-story writer padding out for a longer novel. As a result the culminating event of Gaspar's story and motivation as a character does not arrive until more than halfway through this long novel.
The fourth section travels further back in time, to Gaspar's late mother's life as daughter of the Reyes family, her meeting and childhood love with Juan, followed by her studies in London studying folklore and the occult. This section also comprises the community of young adults that are part of The Order's wealthy and powerful families. This section felt like the emotional core of the novel, if perhaps missing something vis-a-vis the mother's motivations and feelings about The Order. The mother is simultaneously complicit with the objectives of the Order, protective of Juan and especially of Gaspar. She never seems to totally reconcile her divide, and notably her love for Juan never quite seems entirely authentic. Her love for Gaspar is absolute. Rather than family revolutionary she is more of diplomat.
A short section follows, with a journalist writing about a mass grave from the dictatorship's disappearings when she runs into Adela's mother who reveals much more about the secretive Reyes family than is wise. The journalist becomes obsessed with the case of Adela's disappearance and the mysterious Juan and Gaspar Peterson. This section also shone for the astute and compelling blend of narrative and historical evils. If the previous section is the novel's heart, this is it's brain.
The final section again follows Gaspar, another near-decade hence, and suffers much of the same uneven pacing of his previous section. Some of the length is buoyed by the side-story of Pablo, a young gay man in the late 80s era of AIDS and discrimination in Buenos Aires. There is a gimmicky call back to the first section that felt a bit predictable and unnecessary. After rebuilding tension, the novel starts to feel out of breath by the time the story is resolved in a quite predictable turn of events. While the ending did bring some satisfaction in its biblical retributions, it felt like a missed opportunity not to unite some of the various themes in a more thoughtful meditation, rather than spending the preceding 100 pages following the small lives of Gaspar, his uncle, his occasional girlfriend, and his friends.
Ultimately this book, which is billed as literary horror, entertains and impresses at times, but feels frequently to fall short on both halves of this promise. The horror story which informs the novel is frequently stalled and reset without successfully maintaining tension (admittedly a long novel is not the best format for the thrills and moments of grim epiphany of horror). From the literary side, the novel suffered from shoe-horning pointless action into an otherwise compelling (and sometimes compellingly told) allegory of power and politics of 20th century Argentina. I was craving insight. For a novel so long (nearly 700 pages), it seems to avoid saying what it wants to say. Rather than reading like a mind wandering in the dark corridors of authoritarian evils, it read like a confused dogma of "show don't tell", yet finding action an inarticulate tongue....more
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