"No one in this world who does not steal can live in it. Why do you think the judges and officers of the law hate us so? Sometimes they banish us, sometimes they have us whipped, and sometimes hanged, even though our saint's day may yet not have arrived....It is because they do not want any other thieves besides themselves and their underlings around them. What keeps us free more than anything else is an ample stock of clever guile." --Quevedo, La vida del Buscon.

This quote aptly starts off Carmen Boullosa's fast paced and rollicking tale of pirate life in the Carribean Sea during the 17th century. From reading, it seems the other thing that kept the Brethren of the Coast free was the absence of women from the island of Tortuga. Interestingly, it seems that the brethren were able to live communally and share everything until women and property crept onto the island. Once the first brother bought a wife, it was all over. As Boullosa says in her Author's Note, "In its series of adventures, this novel is then a laboratory of things feminine in absentia as much as it is a reminiscence of men who rebelled against a cruel order, and outlaw order, and ended by being as cruel and outside the law as the order they detested."

For me there was an eerie parallel between Smeeks, the pirate's physician, and the military doctors in Iraq who allegedly "oversaw" torture procedures. Both can apparently dutifully value and preserve life with one persona and the with another persona witness and participate in the degradation, torture and loss of life. As with many of the other latin american writers I've read, the point of view or persona of the narrator continually shifts in this book so that if you get reading at too great a clip one can easily get lost.

Overall, this was a quick and enjoyable read. I will be looking for other books by Boullosa as they become available in translation. ( )