In this quick-paced
rush of a story, a Columbian family, caught between the official government,
paramilitaries and guerillas in chaotic and dysfunctional Columbia are forced
to flee their home in a small Columbian town for an unfamiliar life in the
capital city of Bogota. There, they experience crime, joblessness and poverty -
this is the story of how each member of the family tries to survive and keep
the family intact, while maintaining both their dignity and their safety -
which is no easy task in a seeming, lawless city. Somehow, you root for all the
characters, even the many that are forced to make morally ambiguous decisions
in order to survive. The book gives a real and poignant picture of life in
Bogota, the inequality between rich and poor and the physical texture of life
in the slums.
I did not
fall in love with these characters, but I felt for them.
Early in
the story, an acquaintance tells Wilfredo that the genius of the Brazilian
national soccer team is the awareness each player has of one another and the
space they inhabit on the field. This becomes the tragic value the characters
of this novel: continually fail to live up to. They kill to assert themselves,
use one another to fulfill a selfish desire for love, and cannibalize the very
community they should be working to build and reinforce to ensure a better
future.
In one
particularly telling moment, Hernán and Antonio steal a set of encyclopedias
from the local school. Antonio is convinced that the words contained in the
volumes will lead him to a better life, but, inevitably, he is caught. Parents
break down his door in search of the encyclopedias, which they, too, believe to
be the key to their children's futures. But when the encyclopedias can't be
found, they trash Antonio's house and fight amongst themselves. Unlike the
Brazilian soccer players, they can never seem to work together, even if it's
the only real path out of poverty.
Grostephan
held my attention from start to finish with his sharp prose, beautiful and
grotesque images, and his willingness to craft characters that are difficult to
like but fascinating to follow.
The book
does end rather abruptly, but all the characters are left to just keep on
keeping on, with no payoff guaranteed--or even likely--just as in the real
world of these folks, whether in Bogota, Johannesburg or Mumbai or a hundred
other similar settings.
Book review by Andrew P.
