I was recommended this book on another website and reviews seemed overwhelmingly positive so I picked it up. I was looking for some other latam lit after reading 100 Years Of Solitude (great) Love in the Time of Cholera (good) and 2666 (great) and had high hopes.
I’m now done with 3/4 and boy is it a stinker, I really push myself to finish books no matter what but this is an absolute slog. Every story feels like Dr. Evil’s description of his childhood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTJj4wbmAhk). Protagonist goes to some far away location and gets involved in some niche scheme (which seem interchangeable with one another) where he meets a beautiful woman who has lots of sex with him. Then she dies and he escapes. Rinse and repeat. The author seems to name drop for the sake of it. Anyone else read and enjoy this one?
Suttree strikes me as being similarly world weary as Maqroll but McCarthy’s characterization is much richer than Mutis’s and I enjoyed the book more than I’m enjoying Maqroll.
Maybe there’s more going on in McCarthy’s work than just world-weariness, whereas Mutis is focused on that sense of superficiality and jadedness to the point that it excludes other details and depths? Thanks for the thoughtful analysis, this was interesting to read.