Juan Gabriel Vásquez

The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The story is set in Bogotá, Colombia and the reader learns that much of the city is recovering from severe PTSD. Citizens who lived through the Eighties in the time of Pablo Escobar have symptoms not unlike war veterans, having spent a decade living in fear, not going out to public places, restaurants, cafes, etc. and never knowing when a family member or friend would go missing. The narrator grew up in the era and suffers irrational fears and despair after he is wounded while walking with his friend Roberto who is shot and killed, leaving him obsessed with trying to understand the death from the man's surviving daughter. The book becomes a mystery tale and spurs the reader on to discover what happened. The writing is beautiful in translation. Kudos to Anne McLean - I want to read more of her translations and am looking at The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination. One memorable setting of the ruined and abandoned animal park/zoo owned by the drug lord is so real you can hear the squeak of a broken sign hanging by one hinge in the oppressive ever-present heat. The pace is almost dreamy for the first section of the story but picks up rapidly moving forward to other events, further puzzles.
A favorite quotation from the book:
"There is just one direct route beween La Dorada and Bogotá...You turn south and take the straight road that runs by the river that takes you to Honda, the port where travelers used to arrive when no planes flew over the Andes. From London, from New York, from Havana, Colón or Barranquilla, they would arrive by sea at the mouth of the Magdalena and change ship there...long days of sailing upriver on tired steamships...From Honda, each traveler would get to Bogotá however he could, by mule or by train or in a private car...no one has able to explain convincingly, beyond banal historical causes, why a country should choose as its capital its most remote and hidden city. It's not our fault that we Bogotanos are stuffy and cold and distant, because that's what our city is like, and you can't blame us for greeting strangers warily, for we're not used to them."… (more)

"Disillusion comes sooner or later, but it always comes, it doesn’t miss an appointment, it never has."




I debated whether I'd give this 3 or 4 stars, but I eventually decided on 4 -- I'll get to that later.

The first chapter was brilliant. I was engaged from the start and was fascinated by the meandering venture through the complicated but ultimately regular life of Antonio Yammara.

As it went on, though, it diverged from this and by the 3rd chapter we were starting to explore the lives of Elaine and Ricardo.
Unfortunately, this is where my regard of the novel began to go downhill.

The decision to tell these stories by having Antonio transcribe information that he is learning was, in my opinion, not a good one. It quickly became boring and uninteresting, like I was reading a Wikipedia article, and i became exhausted by Antonio's "then this then that happened" narration.

I also found myself indifferent of his relationship with Maya. It felt unnecessary and random and every time they interacted I wanted to close the book and stop reading.


Furthermore, the final chapter, in particular the final few pages, was jarring and unfortunate to read.
I understand the point of the ending, however it wasn't satisfying in any way, and didn't leave me wanting to analyze the message it was depicting, as I'm sure was intended. I just felt regretful that I hadn't stopped reading at the end of the previous chapter to spare myself from the ending.



Ultimately, though, I was obliged to give it 4 stars.
My enjoyment (or lack thereof) of the novel is not an indictment of the quality. Just because I would have preferred it took a different direction (perhaps one that didn't feel so draining to take) doesn't mean that it was objectively bad and I shouldn't impair Vásquez's rating on a subjective opinion.

If you feel that this book is for you, then go ahead.… (more)

I read this for a reading challenge and, while it did sound interesting, I ended up enjoying this more than I expected to. The tone of this book is very much ne of despair and things falling apart - very appropriate given its contents. It deals a lot with corruption and drug smuggling and grief. I haven't read the original, but the atmosphere is captured incredibly well in the English translation. I imagine it must be at least as good in the original.

The text is beautiful and easy to follow (even if the contents are challenging at times). I very much enjoyed most of it but pats gave me somewhat men writing women vibes (like a character being somewhat fixated on what her breasts look like - I have never met anyone who thinks this way). The characters are incredibly flawed and complex and I loved seeing how they change as the descent into chaos and despair progresses.… (more)