I got through about 50 pages before putting this one down. I'm sure Fuentes has some fascinating lights to shine on the area of Mexican politics (which is certainly ripe for literary analysis), but I found the medium in this instance to frustrate more than entice. The book takes as its setting a Mexico in 2020 that has lost all electronic means of communication because its Miami-based satellite has encountered a mechanical failure (brought on by Mexico's political demands on the US). On that premise, Fuentes writes the book as a series of letters between political operatives and public figures.

My problem is primarily this: the letters sound nothing like actual letters. They are unduly descriptive in odd spots because Fuentes is trying to get out descriptions of people and circumstances that the actual letters, were they real, would never contain. Even beyond that, I found the writing to be overly loquacious and awkwardly formal. The discomfort from reading the series of poorly-designed correspondence left me unable to get into the subject matter of the book at all. Once I hit 50 pages, I just couldn't motivate myself to read on.