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Good Offices
Tancredo, a young hunchback, observes and participates in the rites at the Catholic church where he lives under the care of Father Almida. Also in residence are the sexton Celeste Machado, his goddaughter Sabina Cruz, and three widows known collectively as the Lilias, who do the cooking and cleaning and provide charity meals for the local poor and needy. One Thursday, Father Almida and the sexton must rush off to meet the parish’s principal benefactor, Don Justiniano. It will be the first time in forty years Father Almida has not said mass. Eventually they find a replacement: Father Matamoros, a drunkard with a beautiful voice whose sung mass is spellbinding to all. The Lilias prepare a sumptuous meal for Father Matamoros, who persuades them to drink with him. Over the course of the long night the women and Tancredo lose their inhibitions and confess their sins and stories to this strange priest, and in the process re- veal lives crippled by hypocrisy.
141 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
5 people are currently reading
170 people want to read
About the author
Evelio Rosero
44 books141 followersEvelio Rosero Diago was born in Bogotá, Colombia, on March 20, 1958. He is a Colombian writer and journalist, who reached international acclaim after winning in 2006 the prestigious Tusquets Prize.
Evelio Rosero studied primary school in Colombia’s southern city of Pasto, and high school in Bogotá, where he later attended Universidad Externado de Colombia obtaining a degree in Journalism. When he was 21, he won Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Cuento del Quindío 1979 (National Short Story Award of Quindío), for his piece Ausentes (The Departed) that was published by Instituto Colombiano de Cultura in the book 17 Cuentos colombianos (17 Colombian Short Stories). In 1982 he was awarded with the Premio Iberoamericano de Libro de Cuentos Netzahualcóyotl, in Mexico City for his earlier stories, and that same year, a novella under the title Papá es santo y sabio (Dad is holy and wise) won Spain’s Premio Internacional de Novela Breve Valencia. After these early successess, Rosero fled to Europe and lived first in Paris and later in Barcelona.
His first novel in 1984 was Mateo Solo (Mateo Alone), which began his trilogy known as Primera Vez (First Time). Mateo Solo is a story about a child confined in his own home. Mateo knows about the outside world for what he sees through the windows. It is a novel of dazzling confinement, where sight is the main character: his sister, his aunt, his nanny all play their own game while allowing Mateo to keep his hope for identity in plotting his own escape.
With his second book in 1986, Juliana los mira (Juliana is watching), Evelio Rosero was translated into Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and German to great acclaim. Once again, the visual experience of a child, this time a girl, builds the world of grownups and family, unveiling all the brutality and meanness of adults as seen with her ingenuousness. Juliana’s world is her own house and family. As Juliana watches her parents and relatives, she builds them. Her sight alters objects as she contemplates them. This was the first book where Rosero involved other themes from Colombia’s tragical reality such as kidnapping, presented here as a permanent threat that in the end justifies Juliana’s own confinement.
In 1988, El Incendiado (The Burning Man) was published. With this book, Rosero obtained a Proartes bachelor in Colombia and won in 1992 the II Premio Pedro Gómez Valderrama for the most outstanding book written between 1988 and 1992. The novel tells the stories of a group of teenagers from a famous school in Bogotá, Colegio Agustiniano Norte, denouncing the education taught by the priest headmasters as “fool, arcaic, troglodite and morbid”.
To date, he has written nine novels, beginning with Señor que no conoce luna in 1992 and Cuchilla in 2000 which won a Norma-Fundalectura prize. Plutón (Pluto) published also in 2000, Los almuerzos (The lunches) in 2001, Juega el amor in 2002 and Los Ejércitos, which won in 2006 the prestigious 2nd Premio Tusquets Editores de Novela and also won in 2009 the prestigious Independent Foreign Fiction Prize organized by the British newspaper The Independent.
Evelio Rosero currently lives in Bogotá. In 2006 he won Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Literatura (National Literature Prize) awarded in recognition of a life in letters by the Ministry of Culture. His work has been translated into a dozen European languages.
Evelio Rosero studied primary school in Colombia’s southern city of Pasto, and high school in Bogotá, where he later attended Universidad Externado de Colombia obtaining a degree in Journalism. When he was 21, he won Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Cuento del Quindío 1979 (National Short Story Award of Quindío), for his piece Ausentes (The Departed) that was published by Instituto Colombiano de Cultura in the book 17 Cuentos colombianos (17 Colombian Short Stories). In 1982 he was awarded with the Premio Iberoamericano de Libro de Cuentos Netzahualcóyotl, in Mexico City for his earlier stories, and that same year, a novella under the title Papá es santo y sabio (Dad is holy and wise) won Spain’s Premio Internacional de Novela Breve Valencia. After these early successess, Rosero fled to Europe and lived first in Paris and later in Barcelona.
His first novel in 1984 was Mateo Solo (Mateo Alone), which began his trilogy known as Primera Vez (First Time). Mateo Solo is a story about a child confined in his own home. Mateo knows about the outside world for what he sees through the windows. It is a novel of dazzling confinement, where sight is the main character: his sister, his aunt, his nanny all play their own game while allowing Mateo to keep his hope for identity in plotting his own escape.
With his second book in 1986, Juliana los mira (Juliana is watching), Evelio Rosero was translated into Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and German to great acclaim. Once again, the visual experience of a child, this time a girl, builds the world of grownups and family, unveiling all the brutality and meanness of adults as seen with her ingenuousness. Juliana’s world is her own house and family. As Juliana watches her parents and relatives, she builds them. Her sight alters objects as she contemplates them. This was the first book where Rosero involved other themes from Colombia’s tragical reality such as kidnapping, presented here as a permanent threat that in the end justifies Juliana’s own confinement.
In 1988, El Incendiado (The Burning Man) was published. With this book, Rosero obtained a Proartes bachelor in Colombia and won in 1992 the II Premio Pedro Gómez Valderrama for the most outstanding book written between 1988 and 1992. The novel tells the stories of a group of teenagers from a famous school in Bogotá, Colegio Agustiniano Norte, denouncing the education taught by the priest headmasters as “fool, arcaic, troglodite and morbid”.
To date, he has written nine novels, beginning with Señor que no conoce luna in 1992 and Cuchilla in 2000 which won a Norma-Fundalectura prize. Plutón (Pluto) published also in 2000, Los almuerzos (The lunches) in 2001, Juega el amor in 2002 and Los Ejércitos, which won in 2006 the prestigious 2nd Premio Tusquets Editores de Novela and also won in 2009 the prestigious Independent Foreign Fiction Prize organized by the British newspaper The Independent.
Evelio Rosero currently lives in Bogotá. In 2006 he won Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Literatura (National Literature Prize) awarded in recognition of a life in letters by the Ministry of Culture. His work has been translated into a dozen European languages.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
November 10, 2011
good offices (los almuerzos) is the second work by colombian novelist evelio rosero to be translated into english. his first, the armies (los ejércitos), is a compelling story about the horrors of war that garnered him a pair of prestigious literary awards. good offices lacks the intensity of the previous work, yet is still an engaging read, albeit one with a more measured trajectory. set in the capital city of bogotá, the novella deals with the hypocrisies and moral injustices of the local catholic church. rosero's prose is strong and his characters well-conceived (especially the protagonist hunchback tancredo), but the story's drama never seems to build beyond the basic framework. while the church's malfeasances are many, rosero's indictment is rather tame and the satire underwhelming. good offices is a satisfying book, but one that fails to match the proficiency evinced previously by rosero. as further of his works find their way into translation, perhaps the talent promised by the armies will be made more apparent.
in the silence only the rain could be heard, constant, like an affliction, and the hunchback's toings and froings, as he carefully folded the priestly vestments and arranged them one on top of another inside a great wooden chest. the light from a single bulb was insufficient, and night swallowed up the corners of the room; the three lilias' bodies could not be discerned: vague shapes, they disappeared into the blackness; only their faces hovered, yellow, wrinkled and whiskery, shining as if witnessing wonders.
November 7, 2022
A marvelous novella for reading around Halloween. Billed as a satire on the Catholic Church I was a little concerned before picking it up as I am not a great reader of the comical, quite often don't get written humour of any form, but this is one that left me desperately wanting Guillermo del Toro to get hold of the movie rights. . Its gothic, its surreal, its horror, its Bacchanalian, it reminded me of Victor Hugo, of Robert Burns.
It simmers towards its climax on the night Father Almida and his right hand man the sacristan are off visiting his church's benefactor vainly trying to keep their income flowing, leaving the acolyte Tancredo (the Hunchback), Sabrina the sacristan's niece (Esmerelda) and the church's cooks, the three Lilias (the Three Witches) to host the last minute, last option locum priest Father Matamoros (Auld Nick) who has come to stand in for Father Almida at Mass. To their amazement this disheveled, drunken substitute sings the mass with the voice of an angel and transforms the parishioners. Who can blame them for not wanting Almida to return!
Beautifully translated by Anne Maclean (in this case along with Anna Milsom - the two of them have also translated his Feast of the Innocents) Maclean has also translated the other works by him ( The Armies and Stranger to the Moon and most recently Tono the Infallible) which have so far appeared in English. It would be great to get this translated work available as audio recording.
It simmers towards its climax on the night Father Almida and his right hand man the sacristan are off visiting his church's benefactor vainly trying to keep their income flowing, leaving the acolyte Tancredo (the Hunchback), Sabrina the sacristan's niece (Esmerelda) and the church's cooks, the three Lilias (the Three Witches) to host the last minute, last option locum priest Father Matamoros (Auld Nick) who has come to stand in for Father Almida at Mass. To their amazement this disheveled, drunken substitute sings the mass with the voice of an angel and transforms the parishioners. Who can blame them for not wanting Almida to return!
Beautifully translated by Anne Maclean (in this case along with Anna Milsom - the two of them have also translated his Feast of the Innocents) Maclean has also translated the other works by him ( The Armies and Stranger to the Moon and most recently Tono the Infallible) which have so far appeared in English. It would be great to get this translated work available as audio recording.
March 30, 2024
not me dissing the Catholic church on Easter oops
August 19, 2022
Rosero is a master of threatening, claustrophobic spaces. For this novel, the setting is a neighborhood, parish church in Bógata, and the action happens primarily in particular rooms and grounds of the church. More than The Armies or Stranger to the Moon, Good Offices is a horror story. It doesn’t begin that way, but that is what it becomes. Rosero masterfully transforms the narrative into a horror story incrementally and delicately, taking the church and its denizens from a place of kind spirituality and compassionate care to another kind of spirituality and compassion that is darker and insidious and yet satisfying for those who are satisfied by it. A faith built from corruption, where corruption inspires faith: perfectly circular logic. I’d say that the novel is very Poe-like, except that Rosero is not as ham-fisted as Poe is in a story like “The Masque of the Red Death.” Maybe the better comparison is Stephen King, for whom horror is more insidious and pervasive. If The Armies is a commentary on the three most powerful forces(cartels, government, leftist guerillas) tearing apart Colombian society, and Stranger to the Moon is about class and race in Colombia, Good Offices focuses on las trampas de la fe. Or not. There is a sterling little detail. The three old women who are the caretakers of the church--witches, right?--come from a small rural town, where their husbands were killed, where, in fact, all the adult males were killed. By whom, Rosero does not say. Government forces? The drug cartels? Leftist guerillas? Right wing paramilitaries? Hard to say. The trampas, though, may not be of the fe.
February 9, 2025
with the honest disclosure that i finished this while sobering up (my alcohol tolerance is not good), i really enjoyed this!! such a dark and sinister setting packed within like 150 pages. there's so much religious imagery and callbacks, and this overall tone of something extremely sinister happening was so unsettling too. 4 stars only because i feel like the plot was undeveloped and could have gone way further and because the ending felt so abrupt
December 5, 2022
A very quick captivating read. I loved how the characters developed and stood out on their own in such a small book and I liked how Rosero built brilliant caricatures around them all. I found it interesting to delve into the contradictions and hypocrisies of the church that this book reveals. A great little read
July 20, 2012
Though not as compelling as The Armies, The Good Offices is a chilling little book worth attention. All of the events elapse in just one day and are focused on the hunchback named Tancredo, who is lives as an indentured servant in a Catholic Church in Bogota, Columbia. From the opening line we learn that Tancredo, “has a terrible fear of being an animal,” yet as the narrative unfolds we witness that it is not only Tancredo who is subject to primal instincts.
The little church that is home to Tancredo is a pillar to the community, providing daily meals to the city’s prostitutes, orphans, single women, and the aged. However, the pillar’s weakness are revealed when the priest, Father Almida must find a substitute to perform the Thursday evening mass because Almida and the sacristan are tied to the mob and must pray tribute to the mob boss that finances the churches elaborate expenses. Almida’s substitute, Father Matamoras is an alcoholic that replaces the holy water with anisette during the mass but transgresses this fault by blessing the churchgoer’s ears with his heavenly singing voice. All inhibitions are released in Matamoras’s presence and there are some devilishly good scenes that take place between Tancredo and his secret-lover (his child-hood friend and the sexton’s god-daughter) at the altar of the church. The presence of Matamoras causes all sorts of pandemonium to unfold, including a very macabre scene involving three nuns (each named Lilia) and a mischievous cat named after Father Almida.
I noted above that this is a little book, but it is just the right length to explore its themes of guilt hypocrisy, and redemption. Rosero’s translators have sprinkled the text with some lovely language that cause this little book to sparkle with conceit. Take for example this description of the three nuns that are so ensconced in each others hypocrisy that they seem to appear as one person that has forfeited her redemption to the drunken priest’s seductions, “To Tancredo they seemed like strangers. Other women; three demented old ladies five hundred years ago, alive, but reconstituted from scraps, cobwebs: talking corpses” (94). It is such language that gives this odd little story a chilling and fun background worthy of attention.
The little church that is home to Tancredo is a pillar to the community, providing daily meals to the city’s prostitutes, orphans, single women, and the aged. However, the pillar’s weakness are revealed when the priest, Father Almida must find a substitute to perform the Thursday evening mass because Almida and the sacristan are tied to the mob and must pray tribute to the mob boss that finances the churches elaborate expenses. Almida’s substitute, Father Matamoras is an alcoholic that replaces the holy water with anisette during the mass but transgresses this fault by blessing the churchgoer’s ears with his heavenly singing voice. All inhibitions are released in Matamoras’s presence and there are some devilishly good scenes that take place between Tancredo and his secret-lover (his child-hood friend and the sexton’s god-daughter) at the altar of the church. The presence of Matamoras causes all sorts of pandemonium to unfold, including a very macabre scene involving three nuns (each named Lilia) and a mischievous cat named after Father Almida.
I noted above that this is a little book, but it is just the right length to explore its themes of guilt hypocrisy, and redemption. Rosero’s translators have sprinkled the text with some lovely language that cause this little book to sparkle with conceit. Take for example this description of the three nuns that are so ensconced in each others hypocrisy that they seem to appear as one person that has forfeited her redemption to the drunken priest’s seductions, “To Tancredo they seemed like strangers. Other women; three demented old ladies five hundred years ago, alive, but reconstituted from scraps, cobwebs: talking corpses” (94). It is such language that gives this odd little story a chilling and fun background worthy of attention.
March 8, 2016
What a strange and surreal little book! I feel like I have to explain my three stars though. While I would strongly recommends that people read this, and I managed it beginning to end in about 3 hours hence the “little book” statement, I didn’t enjoy the subject matter. I have never been one for books in religious settings (Apart from "In the name of the Rose"). The book is a religious satire, and it has a very dark undertone, especially in the characters of the three Lilias and to me that makes it an uncomfortable read. However it is a beautifully told story, imaginative, clever and actually rather funny in places. My three stars are simply based on the discomfort I experienced reading it and to me enjoyment out of a book is what makes it great, I can still be sad, angry, happy, uncomfortable even but I need to have enjoyed the experience and I didn’t this time.
So in conclusion this is a very personal and subjective review of what is actually a very very good piece of literature that you should read and make up your own mind on.
April 27, 2012
Good Offices' greatest strength it the tightness of the narrative. It's short for a reason; this is exactly how long was needed to execute the plot and develop the themes. And the themes are what the book is all about. Repression and vice, and the interesting fact is that self-repression is its own sort of vice, and like any vice, if it is inflicted upon another, it becomes an insufferable burden. The players in the novel are the repressed/oppressed residents of a church and the one man, a visiting priest, who is free of spirit but crippled by his own traditional vice, drink. Despite the priest's flawed and unholy demeanor, the very fact that he does not force his vice upon others makes him the redeeming/corrupting influence (he offers redemption but the reaction of the other characters, their worldview withered from a lifetime of blind obedience to "holiness," is certainly negative) that turns the whole church on its head.
April 25, 2012
By chance the second book in a row I've read that involves cat-strangling. Both fantastic books, but take it easy on the cats okay?
A weird little book. There's a hunchback, and three witches, and a near-albino nympho-maniacal angel, and a priest with a hauntingly holy voice and a drinking problem. There's also some elderly people who will tell you they are already dead when they're obviously not. As the night grows darker all these characters get mixed into a bizarre anxiety dream. The witches will show you the veins on their legs. The cats will jump on the table and eat all the food. The angel is waiting under the altar for sex. What it's all about I don't really know, but it's well written and alluringly weird. Just my thing. Except, lay off the cats!
A weird little book. There's a hunchback, and three witches, and a near-albino nympho-maniacal angel, and a priest with a hauntingly holy voice and a drinking problem. There's also some elderly people who will tell you they are already dead when they're obviously not. As the night grows darker all these characters get mixed into a bizarre anxiety dream. The witches will show you the veins on their legs. The cats will jump on the table and eat all the food. The angel is waiting under the altar for sex. What it's all about I don't really know, but it's well written and alluringly weird. Just my thing. Except, lay off the cats!
October 4, 2011
4 1/2 Stars. At the center of Good Offices, a new novel by Evelio Rosero and translated by Anne McLean with Anna Milsom, is Tancredo—a hunchback and an orderly at a Catholic church in Bagotá, Columbia with an almost pathological fear of becoming an animal, a recurring anxiety no doubt provoked by suppressed guilt over his love affair with Sabina, a pale, moonfaced secretary and close friend since childhood, who pleads Tancredo to run away with her. Read our whole review at nthWORD Shorts:
http://shorts.nthword.com/2011/10/goo...
http://shorts.nthword.com/2011/10/goo...
February 13, 2013
A timely book, considering the Catholic Church is currently steeped in controversy. The book features a somewhat unreliable narrator who is at times humorous, other times darkly passionate. Sometimes simultaneously. It is a slim, fast read that is best enjoyed in one sitting so it allows you to enter this strange and mysterious world where things may not always be as they seem. A world filled with varied passions, young and old oppressed women, dim light, alcohol, shovels, gardens, and cats. The ending is fabulous in more ways than one. I would recommend it.
January 14, 2017
A great fan of Rosero's earlier book, The Armies, I found this short novel more difficult to read. A young hunchbacked man is living in a Catholic Church in Bogota with the priest, the sacristan and his goddaughter, Sabina, and old women - all of whom play important parts in this story. Tancredo, who has been promised an advanced education by the priest ( a promise he understands will never be fulfilled) is angry, fearful, confused, sexually conflicted. In writing this summary I realize how much I did get caught up in this book - and raised my rating from 3 stars to 4!
November 25, 2012
A short, detailed account of lives interwoven into the activities of a church: several people supporting the churches rites & giving through hard, laborious work & yet two find a bit of passion if not love. Ultimately, two others find their end, but the novel stops, suddenly, not tying up loose ends, but leaving us wondering.
December 27, 2012
Magnificent. Keeps getting better and better, leading up to an increasingly surreal and shocking ending. Fabulous translation by the always-dependable Anne McLean (this time with Anna Milsom). I get the feeling that there are some very weird novels that remain untranslated in Rosero's oeuvre.
November 3, 2011
I don't have the moments to write a detailed review but I will say this book was a quick read. "Good Offices" provides a look at the corruption of a small Catholic church. Read this if you like your mind to be gently proded.
November 9, 2014
Creepy, disturbingly funny and oddly captivating. Killer first sentence: "He has a terrible fear of being an animal, especially on Thursdays, at lunchtime." Would be fun to read this alongside Bolaño's "By Night in Chile."
November 4, 2011
I enjoyed Good Offices but was very aware that I was not getting it. Maybe I would understand better if I had been raised Catholic.
Want to read
November 25, 2011
January 4, 2012
Quick read. Haunting story. Loved it.
July 24, 2013
A very odd little book - but despite its brevity, it was wonderful.
Read
January 27, 2014Think I must have missed something. Thought it was terrible.
March 10, 2014
It's too bad they had to strangle all those cats but they did steal the rabbit
March 24, 2014
Great, short, demented book. It presents some amazing, dare I say painterly scenes along the lines of Goya's "Witches in the Air"
December 21, 2016
Funny at times, but more of an extended short story than a novella or novel.
December 8, 2015
incredible.
fuckity fuck.
fuckity fuck.
May 1, 2017
The title of the book in Spanish is "Los Almuerzos", or "The Lunches", and I'm not quite sure why it was translated into English as "Good Offices." I'm not even sure why it was entitled "Los almuerzos" in Spanish except that there is a recurring reference to the daily activity of the Catholic parish workers who on a daily basis takes on the arduous task of feeding lunch (almuerzo) to the poor citizens of Bogota on rotation (I.e., whores, elderly, children on different days). The experience of feeding the needy is difficult for those involved in the actual process of preparing and feeding a fairly ungrateful crowd but the task is a spiritual 'attaboy' for the administrator (the priest), whose hands are clean of the process.
The novel takes place over one night when the installed priest is away for the first time in 40 years in an attempt to soothe the anger of the church's benefactor, who is threatening to pull funding over "lies" being told about how he earns his money. (Get it?) This leads to a night of carnival while the parish priest is away in the truest definition - "an instance of riotous excess" (Merriam-Webster).The substitute priest is a drunk who pours liquor in the chalice as a cup but sings like a cherub, the three elderly female cooks- well- let's just say their primal urges are satisfied, and the young hunchback and his blonde "Esmeralda" are interested in obtaining carnal knowledge together. Yes, quite the homage to Victor Hugo to have the main character be a hunchback/acolyte lusting after an exotic girl, right?
So, we are presented with a set very human characters. I finished the book unsure of what I just read. I conducted a post mortem by reading some literature reviews of the book, and was satisfied that if people who are paid to dissect books for a living felt the same way,I didn't miss the boat.
It was interesting and critics say it's a parable of Colombia, but I'm not Colombian and other than reading between the line as to what The benefactor's "profession" was, I think some of the more subtle parody was lost on me.
I wish I could have been more engaged in the story. I did get a kick out of the substitute drunk priest - he was a trip. If you are interested in reading Colombian literature, add it to your stack.
The novel takes place over one night when the installed priest is away for the first time in 40 years in an attempt to soothe the anger of the church's benefactor, who is threatening to pull funding over "lies" being told about how he earns his money. (Get it?) This leads to a night of carnival while the parish priest is away in the truest definition - "an instance of riotous excess" (Merriam-Webster).The substitute priest is a drunk who pours liquor in the chalice as a cup but sings like a cherub, the three elderly female cooks- well- let's just say their primal urges are satisfied, and the young hunchback and his blonde "Esmeralda" are interested in obtaining carnal knowledge together. Yes, quite the homage to Victor Hugo to have the main character be a hunchback/acolyte lusting after an exotic girl, right?
So, we are presented with a set very human characters. I finished the book unsure of what I just read. I conducted a post mortem by reading some literature reviews of the book, and was satisfied that if people who are paid to dissect books for a living felt the same way,I didn't miss the boat.
It was interesting and critics say it's a parable of Colombia, but I'm not Colombian and other than reading between the line as to what The benefactor's "profession" was, I think some of the more subtle parody was lost on me.
I wish I could have been more engaged in the story. I did get a kick out of the substitute drunk priest - he was a trip. If you are interested in reading Colombian literature, add it to your stack.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews