Pedro Páramo
Ratings83
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings83
Average rating3.9
Deserted villages of rural Mexico, where images and memories of the past linger like unquiet ghosts, haunted the imaginations of the author. In one such village of the mind, Comala, he set his classic novel Pedro Páramo, a dream-like tale that intertwines a man's quest to find his lost father and reclaim his patrimony with the father's obsessive love for a woman who will not be possessed, Susana San Juan.
Reviews with the most likes.
Read the 1959 Lysander Kemp translation. Hoping to get a copy of the new Weatherford translation for a reread.
When you finish this you feel like you need to restart it again. This time paying closer attention, trying to pick apart the strands of voices you are encountering. While the novel starts in a linear fashion it quickly dissolves into a feverish dream, a collection of whispers of different POV, mixing the past and the present. Sometimes becomes clear and focused, sometimes leaving you in the dark. Telling stories of love and death and cruelty, in a simple and beautiful prose. I might need to let this sink in a bit more.
I ordinarily grant each book a simple star rating; it will not be so here. This is the kind of special book that requires several readings.
I had never heard about this book before a fan mentioned it in my Mastodon timeline. The foreword by Gabriel Garcia Marques was already a great promise and I must admit I fell in love with this book atmosphere and writing. There is something eery and hard to describe in Pedros Paramos, the way the events chronology is fragmented, how you can’t be sure about whom you’re reading until the end of the paragraphs,…
This is one of the rare books I will want to reread because of its uniqueness and to delve deeper into its setting. A wonderful piece.
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