8432203440

This is a remarkable book, and I hardly know where to begin to talk about it. Starting as a seemingly straightforward tale of the hugely rich and aristocratic Ventura family, consisting of seven sisters and brothers, their spouses, and their 33 surviving children, it quickly becomes convoluted, bizarre, disturbing, comic, perverse, shocking, postmodern, and puzzling. At the same time, Donoso has said that this book was his response to the 1973 coup by Pinochet and that he has even included word-for-word excerpts from both Pinochet and Allende (in an interview on the Dalkey Archive website at http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/a-conversation-with-jose-donoso-by-ricardo-gutierre....

The story begins at the Ventura's house in the country, Marulanda, where the parents are preparing to take their huge retinue of servants and go for a day-long excursion to a fabulous woodland glade and waterfall, leaving the cousins, ranging in age from 6 to 16, locked inside the "park" that surrounds the the house and separates it from the grassy plains and native populations outside with hundreds of metal lances tipped with gold and embedded in cement beneath the ground. The servants are not just servants but, led by the huge Majordomo, enforcers of the parents' rule over the children, doling out cruel punishments that leave no marks. And the native people have been conquered by the Venturas' ancestors and now work for them, mining and laminating the gold that is the source of the their wealth. The white people all believe the natives are cannibals, and threaten the children that they will be eaten if they misbehave.

So the stage is set for intrigue and trouble when all the adults leave: all the adults but one. For Uncle Adriano, who married the totally frivolous and somewhat slow-witted Balbina Ventura, and who is the father of 9-year-old Wenceslao, has been enclosed in a straitjacket, drugged, and locked in a tower ever since he "went crazy" because of a truly horrifying and shocking event. (A doctor, he was the only family member to have any relationship with the native people.) Wenceslao is determined to take advantage of the absence of the adults, which it develops has been engineered by a group of the children, to free his father. Other groups of children are engaged in plots of their own, and most of them believe the adults will not return at the end of the day as they have promised. Some of them try to leave.

That's about all I can tell to set the stage, both because I don't want to spoil all the surprises and because there is so much else going on in this novel, or "fable," as the author, who intervenes occasionally to explain what he is doing with the plot and the characters, persists in describing the work. Towards the end, he also notes that the characters are "emblems" and "a-psychological." I am sure I didn't understand everything Donoso was doing in this book, but here are some thoughts.

First of all, there is an artificial feel to a lot of the book. Not only are the characters "emblems" (although Donoso has accomplished quite a feat in making so many characters understandably different, it is extremely helpful that he includes a list of parents, children, and ages at the beginning), but several of them engage in a long-running improvised "play" called La Marquise Est Sortie à Cinq Heures. The "play" allow them to use flowery language, flirt and plot, and remove themselves from the reality of life in the summer house. Further, the house is filled with trompe l'oeil frescoes and wall decorations; the highly liveried servants melt into the walls, and the people on the walls spring to life. There are also revelations about the library and other aspects of the house that are not what they appear to be. Tying in with this, there are people who are blind, or practically blind, or dependent on very strong eyeglasses, and there is a whole network of tunnels beneath the house (for reasons revealed later) in which people have to find their way by feeling the edges.

Then, there is the whole idea of cannibalism. Whether the native people ever were cannibals is never quite clear, but the idea that they "still" are serves the function of keeping the children in place. At the same time, the mothers are always saying things to the little children like "oh, you're so delicious" and "oh, I could just eat you up with kisses." The idea of cannibalism threads its way through the novel.

There is also a theme of holding back nature. The lance "walls" of the park hold back the grasses of the plain, but every year in the fall there are winds that bring what are called "thistledown blizzards" that make it almost impossible to breathe. And many of the tunnels under the house are brimming with the unstoppable growth of wild mushrooms.

The second half of the novel relates to the return of the adults, after what seems to them only a day. Denying the reality that appears before they even reach the house, they dispatch the servants to return to the house and straighten everything out while they return to their homes in the capital until order is restored. This section gets really wild and crazy, with turmoil, fighting, cruelty, bravery, and revelation after revelation; at this point, "reality" becomes even more tenuous than it has already been, and the author returns more often to discuss his choices.

So what to make of this book? I was really impressed by Donoso's ideas and imagination. I was less able to detect the political ideas; although it was possible to see the servants, on their return, as the army, it was a lot less clear who other groups of people might represent. My conclusion is that this is, as Donoso, said, a "response" to the Pinochet coup and crackdown and that he is not trying to make complete analogies. I think I spent too much time trying to figure out who might stand for whom and not enough just experiencing the novel.

Although I've written at length, I've only scratched the surface of this complicated book. If I didn't have so many other books I want to read, I would start it all over again.

This was a book I picked up many years ago because of the cover (Keith Sheridan gets a shout out for the design). Aventura trade editions are always such cool books that I didn't realize I had been duped into reading a fantastical tale of a 19th Century family obsessed with some really heavy...doings.

The South America country is un-named, but yeah, it's Chile and Donoso is writing to portray Pinochet's reign. Latin American literature of the last decades of the 20th Century always has the experimental escapist edge and this book is no different. Cannibals and incest and murder, oh my.

Book Season = Winter (when it's summer in Chile) ( )

La mansión señorial donde los Ventura, sus cónyuges y sus treinta y cinco hijos pasan el verano, lejos de la civilización, se alza como un espejismo en medio de la llanura.

Por sus salones, pasillos, escalinatas y torreones deambulan los niños (desde Juvenal y Melania, adolescentes, hasta el pequeño Amadeo o el bello Wenceslao, travestido en niña por mandato de su madre), poblando la casa con intrigas, transgresiones y juegos que cuestionan una perversión mayor: el orden impuesto por sus aristocráticos padres.

Los Ventura organizan un fastuoso día de campo para los mayores, y encierran a sus hijos en la enorme mansión, cerrada por una reja de lanzas?..¿Qué hay más allá? La llanura ilimitada, los antropófagos, la naturaleza y sus fuerzas no domadas. Pero también en los niños anida la subversión. Y están solos.

Novela basada en un día en la casa de campo solo con adultos, por lo cual, los menores no son permitidos dentro de la fiesta, los encierran para que no interrumpan dentro de la fiesta de "los mayores".
Los padres son autoritarios y todo lo que ordenan debe ser cumplido. Por esta razón el encierro no es nada fuera de lo común y los pequeños deben pasar el día dentro de la casa mientras los mayores se divierten sin parar.