Group Read, March 2017: The Feast of the Goat

For March our Group Read is Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat. When I read this a few years ago I rated it a gripping and chilling 5 stars, but it will be interesting to see what others think. Please put your thoughts on this thread.

I just finished a book, so I think I'll start this today. I don't know a ton about Trujillo, though I read a non-list book called The Farming of Bones that was about the Parsley Massacre and sort of opened my eyes to some of the politics of the era and region.

I've also never read any Mario Vargas Llosa, so I'm starting from scratch in every sense!

Not sure if there are multiple translations available for this book, but mine is by Edith Grossman.

>2 japaul22: I am reading the same translation. Just getting started. First three chapters from very different viewpoints and many characters are introduced -- you have to really concentrate, although the story itself is completely gripping. Not sure I will exactly "enjoy" this one but it will be intereseting.

I'm about half way through. Finding it gripping as you say, annamorphic. I'm pleasantly surprised that though it's violent it isn't off-putting to me since it also seems to be the study of a man and power. The violence is integral to the story Vargas Llosa is trying to tell. And I really enjoy Urania's parts.

I always think it's brave of an author to write fiction about a public figure like this who, in the grand scope of history, was a recent ruler. I wonder if there are many people out there who have read this and thought - "yes, exactly" or "no, not that's not right at all!"

I'm approaching half way as well. The three threads are an interesting balance, although I find the conspirators' one hard to untangle and very intense. The parts that actually follow The Goat himself are great; they remind me of Solzhenitsyn's Stalin chapters in The First Circle (a recent read).

>6 annamorphic: when I first started the conspirators' thread I wondered how this one evening, really just a moment, was going to be spun out to balance the other narrative threads. But it's working well - intense, though, for sure.

I'm towards the end now -

Having to skim a bit through some of the torture scenes. It's just too graphic for me. I'm glad the whole book wasn't like this!

er... hi everyone. Forgot about this (waits for everyone to throw something at him as he's been campaigning for the goat to be a group read for the last several years)... and for some reason the thread didn't show up as unread for me.

I'll make a start on this tonight!

I was wondering where you were!

>8 japaul22: I too am finding the conspirator scenes very hard going. By some awful coincidence the book to which I'm listening to on audio just also had a torture scene. I really need some LIGHT reading after this!

I recognize that this is a very well-structured book that compellingly imagines the warped lives of a dictator and those who surround him. I have a feeling that if I knew more about Trujillo & his time, I would like it more. Solzhenitsyn's Stalin chapters worked for me because I knew a lot about Russian history. I don't have the framework for this book.

here's the context I'm reading it in today: lunchtime at my cubicle at work here in Saudi Arabia. It would be great to see where you're reading it too! (Hint: you can use a free image hoster like https://postimg.org)

>11 annamorphic: I also found this difficult to read because it is a horror story that is largely true. Yet it riveted my attention because I grew to want to find out the fates of the main characters. Details of torture and cruelty of every kind make it tough going, but this is in part balanced by the emergence of humanity on the part of those that refused to accept state terrorism as a way of life. I'll also turn to some light reading for awhile after this.

It is a book everyone should read in the current context in which a major power has elected an admitted sex abuser who openly advocates torture and other forms of state terrorism.

>13 bkinetic: yes to your last point -- that is exactly why I found it so difficult to read. I couldn't distance myself enough.

enabling us to associate so very personally in spite of any distance in time and/or space is what makes a novel a classic in my opinion.

feel like I'm about the read the inevitable in Uranita's story as the net closes in on her father.

I'm enjoying the way that the chapters that focus on her shift transition between the past and present seamlessly between paragraphs. Much better than the old different chapter different era approach which is typical.

>16 arukiyomi: I really liked the time shifts too. I did wonder, in my complete ignorance, if in Spanish there's a way of writing (some sort of tense) that would make it a little clearer when the shifts are happening and might not translate into English well?

Either way, though I sometimes had to go back a sentence and reread to realize that a time shift had happened, I thought it was very effective and natural. Large sections are based on memory and memory isn't thought in a linear fashion.

done. Very powerful. Will definitely remember it, not least because it's the first book by a Latin/South American writer that I actually thought was worth recommending to anyone (and yes, I've read quite a few). Thought there was a lot of thought put into the way it was written and it had a powerful message about, well, power and how we respond to it. Nice to have a twist or two along the way, one I definitely should have seen coming.

I've just started this - I've been terrible about reading 1001 books for a month or so but I've started up again.

So far it's great but it's early days.

I finished this a few days ago; another great book which reminds me of how great the list is for expanding my reading horizons.

I did a little bit of reading once I'd finished as I knew nothing about the history of that region, or very little anyway. And it's good to try to separate the fiction from the nonfiction elements.

The strong themes of male machismo really appealed (by appealed I mean they were interesting) - men fighting and fucking to prove that they are 'real' men and not a bunch of pansy poofters of even less worth than an actual woman. I'm just glad that that has never been my life!

so... only three (?) of us finished this? Barely a group read!

japaul22... what happened to you?? ;-)

>21 arukiyomi: I finished before you started!! ;-)

Posted my review on my thread on March 11. I'd love to talk about the ending which I considered a twist since I didn't figure it out until close to the end of the book. Is it ok to talk wth spoilers now?

I think spoilers are fairly much ok in a group read so long as there is a suitable warning. It's not much of a discussion if we can't talk freely.

If you are talking about the rape (I think it's fair to call it that considering the surrounding circumstances) I saw that coming a long way off. Certainly after the conversation started between her and the aunts and relations. After all of the talk which covered how women were treated I thought this would be the way the author would make it relevant to the reader - so the violation didn't just occur to various nameless women but also to the narrator of the story. And to be betrayed by her father like that and after he had taken such care to shield her from other men that he was clearly afraid would sexually assault her.

I found that a little too contrived tbh. I didn't need it added to the story and I thought it actually took me away from the horror of the events because I thought it was so conveniently inserted.

I wasn't surprised by the rape by Trujillo or that her father implicitly condoned it. What I didn't realize until embarrassingly late was that the girl that Trujillo was obsessing over throughout his last days because he was not able to fully consummate sexual relations with her was Uranita. I thought that gave Uranita a power that she didn't even know she had. (Is that worth anything?) He was thinking/obsessing over her in anger to his last moments. Right? Or am I way off?

Oh I see. No that was a little bit of a surprise. I don't see it so much that he was obsessing over her as such. She could have been anybody; it was the fact that anyone has seen such a shameful weakness - that whole macho male thing again. He was obsessing over wiping out the shameful lack of performance by screwing a 'proper' woman. Obviously the main reason he failed was because she was such a scrawny unattractive bitch...

I don't think it gave her power either. For being privy to what happened was a great danger to her life, I think she was very lucky to have left the country so quickly after that happened.

>25 M1nks: I think that's why it surprised me so much. I spent the whole book sort of glossing over who the girl he was thinking about was - thinking it was any faceless girl in a brothel and that it was just all about his reaction to his failure. And for him, of course, it was. But it meant something to me as a reader that it was Uranita that made him feel that way.

Then I think that that was what he intended you should feel. All of the vitriolic hatred he spews out, the foul language, is just towards a barely pubescent virgin both innocent and the daughter of his mistreated staff member.

I thought it must be some prostitute considering how he thought about her but it's just a heavy handed reinforcement of how contemptuously women were treated by these men, how totally lacking in morality they were.

>24 japaul22: exactly... that was the twist for me. I saw the rape coming from about halfway in, but didn't connect Trujillo's thoughts with Uranita.

I also wondered how I felt about Belaguer... a political genius or simply out to save his a**?

I leaned more towards his belief in serving his country - and his ability to manipulate events and people to achieve the most stable outcome for the nation as a whole.

>28 arukiyomi: I thought of him as opportunistic. And patient.

I would be so curious to know what someone who lived through this time in the region thought of this book.

With no free press how would anybody really know what was going on anyway? Unless you were directly involved, when you'd probably only know your own little piece of it. Everything else would be rumour and guess work.

I wonder to what extent Dirty Havana is any insight into what life is like under a dictator in the Caribbean? Was Castro as notorious as Trujillo within his own nation?