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Pacazo: Dynamic Lifestyle Changes to Put YOU in the Driver's Seat
Roy Kesey's riveting debut novel tells the story of John Segovia, an American historian who teaches English at a small university in Piura, on the desert coast of Peru. The narrative moves between John's obsessive search for his wife's killer and his attempts to build a new life for himself and his infant daughter. The storms of El Niño and the ghosts of history that stalk the sands of the Sechura Desert give this novel the sweep of an epic tale. Throughout, Pacazo explores and celebrates the many ways in which we construct the stories we tell of ourselves and those we love. It gives living form to anger and fear and desire, to courage and kindness and strength, and in so doing confirms Roy Kesey as one of the most innovative and compelling American writers working today.
531 pages, Hardcover
First published January 18, 2011
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202 people want to read
About the author
Roy Kesey
15 books46 followersAuthor and translator Roy Kesey was born in northern California and currently lives in Maryland. His latest book is the short story collection Any Deadly Thing (Dzanc Books 2013). His other books include the novel Pacazo (Dzanc Books 2011/Jonathan Cape 2012), the short story collection All Over (Dzanc Books 2007), the novella Nothing in the World (Bullfight Media 2006/Dzanc Books 2007), and two historical guidebooks. He has received a number of awards for his work, including an NEA creative writing fellowship, the Paula Anderson Book Award, and the Bullfight Media Little Book Award. His short stories, essays, translations and poems have appeared in more than a hundred magazines and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and New Sudden Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
March 23, 2011
Roy Kesey’s “Pacazo” is not a book to be rushed through. It is a work as fine as any classic, meant to be read again and again, slowly, with attention. It is the story of John Segovia, a North American ex-pat historian working in Piura, Peru as an English professor. He’d come to the place of his name-sake (when John was a boy, his father told him he was a descendant of Juan de Segovia) and not only fell in love with his late wife, but seemed to fall in love with the land and all of its quirks, failings and beauty. We meet John after his wife has been brutally raped and has died, disoriented and wounded, in the desert. John spends much of the novel overcoming the urge to seek violent revenge, sometimes while carrying his infant child around in a snuggly. He seems to always be plotting, seeking, and nearly always on the verge of being fired, and though he’s clearly suffering, avenging Pilar’s death seems to give him a purpose, as does diminishing the ill effects of El Nino on comfortable living.
The narration, told in the present tense and from John’s point of view, is a hybrid mix of collage and stream of consciousness. Scene blends into historical discourse which blends into dreams remembered which blend into sensory observations, sometimes within the same paragraph, sometimes within the same sentence. The result of which lends the feeling, at times, of being unmoored thus reflecting the narrator’s state of mind. The novel is laced with humor and packed with startling imagery: pacazo shit raining down on John’s head, whole mountains collapsing, and details of how a stingray’s “barbed spine will plunge in and rip out, taking its plug of flesh.” Not only rich with history and detail, the novel also offers insight on Peruvian manners and customs: for instance if someone pauses before he says yes to an invitation, he’s politely saying no.
John Segovia is a magnificent, lumbering, well-meaning character, and in “Pacazo” the country of Peru is a character just as prominent, just as magnificent. After reading this imaginative, refreshingly unique novel, I feel I know the place and its people enough to hold them both in my mind and heart, almost as if I’d been to Piura, Peru myself.
The narration, told in the present tense and from John’s point of view, is a hybrid mix of collage and stream of consciousness. Scene blends into historical discourse which blends into dreams remembered which blend into sensory observations, sometimes within the same paragraph, sometimes within the same sentence. The result of which lends the feeling, at times, of being unmoored thus reflecting the narrator’s state of mind. The novel is laced with humor and packed with startling imagery: pacazo shit raining down on John’s head, whole mountains collapsing, and details of how a stingray’s “barbed spine will plunge in and rip out, taking its plug of flesh.” Not only rich with history and detail, the novel also offers insight on Peruvian manners and customs: for instance if someone pauses before he says yes to an invitation, he’s politely saying no.
John Segovia is a magnificent, lumbering, well-meaning character, and in “Pacazo” the country of Peru is a character just as prominent, just as magnificent. After reading this imaginative, refreshingly unique novel, I feel I know the place and its people enough to hold them both in my mind and heart, almost as if I’d been to Piura, Peru myself.
March 11, 2012
Kesey has invented (at least I believe he has) a brand-new type of narration in Pacazo, one which works beautifully for his story. John Segovia, an American teaching in Peru, is a widower with a year-old child, Mariangel. Not long after Mariangel's birth, Segovia's Peruvian-born wife, Pilar, was abducted, assaulted, and left to die in the desert. Segovia is obsessed with tracking down and punishing the killer, and his first-person account moves seamlessly, even within one sentence, between present tense observation and action, his past with Pilar, and the historical past of the European conquest of Peru, a particular interest of Segovia's. The effect is dreamlike and creates a deeper kind of psychology than is usual in a novel, blending as it does the personal and the historical-sociological. Threaded throughout are surprisingly comic set pieces: an academic dinner, the bureaucratic nightmare of getting a visa extension, a drunken evening watching national soccer at a bar. This is a big (500-plus pages) and big-hearted book that takes on grief, love, fatherhood, violence, the situation of the foreigner, and historical and contemporary atrocity.
July 8, 2013
I waited a couple of days to let this book settle in my mind and to consider what I wanted to say here. This is a remarkable book in every way, and I thank the friend who brought it to my attention. My actual reading experience was somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, each time I picked up the book I could barely force myself to put it down. On the other, each evening when it was time to read, I was a bit reluctant to pick it up because of the intensity and nearly overwhelming sense impressions of the book. That's not a bad thing, but it was not guaranteed to send me off to sleep with sweet dreams either.
The closest I can come to an analogous reading experience would be the novels of Thomas Pynchon. But Kesey's book is really very different. For one thing, it lacks Pynchon's cynicism. And where Pynchon's characters are often cartoonish and absurd, the characters in this novel seem very real and the narrative is full of richness. Kesey's characters may act absurdly or against their own best interests sometimes (or more often than not), but they are delineated vividly and they feel like real people whose fortunes the reader cares about. Don't get the idea that this novel is "realistic," though, or any kind of "magical realism." This story is sad, crazy, happy, tragic, funny and, I think, hopeful. Past and present interpenetrate from one word to the next in the story, but it's not hard to get used to that. The past is ever-present in a land haunted by successive conquests and brutal exterminations. It is a land full of beauty and ugliness, the Andes and the desert where bodies are tossed like so much garbage, but where botanical wonders continue to bloom each year and lakes magically appear after a downpour. The characters are equally rich. They are contrary, funny, kind, nasty, and just looking for love and some answers like everyone else. The novel is a murder mystery, a tale of fatherhood, and a story about many different kinds of love. I hope the book grabs you like it grabbed me. It was a gripping and profound reading experience.
The closest I can come to an analogous reading experience would be the novels of Thomas Pynchon. But Kesey's book is really very different. For one thing, it lacks Pynchon's cynicism. And where Pynchon's characters are often cartoonish and absurd, the characters in this novel seem very real and the narrative is full of richness. Kesey's characters may act absurdly or against their own best interests sometimes (or more often than not), but they are delineated vividly and they feel like real people whose fortunes the reader cares about. Don't get the idea that this novel is "realistic," though, or any kind of "magical realism." This story is sad, crazy, happy, tragic, funny and, I think, hopeful. Past and present interpenetrate from one word to the next in the story, but it's not hard to get used to that. The past is ever-present in a land haunted by successive conquests and brutal exterminations. It is a land full of beauty and ugliness, the Andes and the desert where bodies are tossed like so much garbage, but where botanical wonders continue to bloom each year and lakes magically appear after a downpour. The characters are equally rich. They are contrary, funny, kind, nasty, and just looking for love and some answers like everyone else. The novel is a murder mystery, a tale of fatherhood, and a story about many different kinds of love. I hope the book grabs you like it grabbed me. It was a gripping and profound reading experience.
February 6, 2011
the first book i've received with a TRBC stamp on the cover....hmmm...that's heavy with power and potential responsibility....can't wait to delve into it tonight...
Almost two months later: Finally. Finished. It it weren't for the TRBC, I doubt I would've finished this book. I'm glad I did.
Many have said, the book did not begin to grab them until 90, 100, or 150 pages. It took me a little over 200. (I'm often slower in this manner - a little late to the party.)
Full of Peruvian and Inca history scattered throughout, I stumbled often in the first half. I'll admit, I'm historically illiterate with this period and area of history. Honestly, after reading Pacazo, I'm still illiterate - but now, I'm confused AND illiterate.
I'm pleased to report, it didn't matter. (I fully acknowledge I would've experienced the novel on more levels, had I understood - it didn't stop me from appreciating and following the more obvious storylines.) Once I was gripped, John's story began to stand out from the glimpses of Incan past, and I couldn't put it down. I persisted, solely because of TRBC encouragement.
It's a story of the devastating loss of one true love. Of realizing, too late, how selfish you were around that love. The violence was not surprising - as it was indicative of the brokenness of the lover who was left among the living. It's about the struggle to resolve the murder and uncontrollable loss. John could not go back in time and keep his wife safe. He could relentlessly search for her murderer. The concerns and love of friends could not stop his quest. In one exhange, his housekeeper threatens to take his daughter - because she will be better off without him, he's not a "good father". His reply? "You're probably right." John is human and honest.
John accepts he cannot move on until there is some sort of resolution. It appears, perhaps, his friends know the same and may have even "arranged" for false resolution of sorts. (It didn't work.)
This story contains a multitude of beautiful layers within layers. Roy Kesey more than proves himself a formidable contemporary author among today's literary circles. I just hope his next book takes a little less time to write.
Thanks, TRBC-ers, for your encouragement!
I also learned, I don't believe I'll go to Peru during a rainy season.
Almost two months later: Finally. Finished. It it weren't for the TRBC, I doubt I would've finished this book. I'm glad I did.
Many have said, the book did not begin to grab them until 90, 100, or 150 pages. It took me a little over 200. (I'm often slower in this manner - a little late to the party.)
Full of Peruvian and Inca history scattered throughout, I stumbled often in the first half. I'll admit, I'm historically illiterate with this period and area of history. Honestly, after reading Pacazo, I'm still illiterate - but now, I'm confused AND illiterate.
I'm pleased to report, it didn't matter. (I fully acknowledge I would've experienced the novel on more levels, had I understood - it didn't stop me from appreciating and following the more obvious storylines.) Once I was gripped, John's story began to stand out from the glimpses of Incan past, and I couldn't put it down. I persisted, solely because of TRBC encouragement.
It's a story of the devastating loss of one true love. Of realizing, too late, how selfish you were around that love. The violence was not surprising - as it was indicative of the brokenness of the lover who was left among the living. It's about the struggle to resolve the murder and uncontrollable loss. John could not go back in time and keep his wife safe. He could relentlessly search for her murderer. The concerns and love of friends could not stop his quest. In one exhange, his housekeeper threatens to take his daughter - because she will be better off without him, he's not a "good father". His reply? "You're probably right." John is human and honest.
John accepts he cannot move on until there is some sort of resolution. It appears, perhaps, his friends know the same and may have even "arranged" for false resolution of sorts. (It didn't work.)
This story contains a multitude of beautiful layers within layers. Roy Kesey more than proves himself a formidable contemporary author among today's literary circles. I just hope his next book takes a little less time to write.
Thanks, TRBC-ers, for your encouragement!
I also learned, I don't believe I'll go to Peru during a rainy season.
January 13, 2011
A haunting story about love, loss, and the relationship between the past and the present. Kesey expertly weaves together the present impressions, memories, and historical knowledge of a narrator struggling to process a senseless tragedy. There are a few lulls in the story, spots where its easy to get impatient and wonder where Kesey is going, but those are relatively rare. The book also offered a fascinating look at a culture I was fairly unfamiliar with before reading (the narrator is an American who is studying history and teaching English as a second language at a university in Peru).
Pacazo moves slowly and lyrically, so those looking for a fast-paced, action-filled book will likely be disappointed. But for anyone seeking insight into the workings of the human mind and heart, and how certain events, whether from our recent experiential or historical pasts, shape our present and future, Pacazo should be considered a must-read.
Pacazo moves slowly and lyrically, so those looking for a fast-paced, action-filled book will likely be disappointed. But for anyone seeking insight into the workings of the human mind and heart, and how certain events, whether from our recent experiential or historical pasts, shape our present and future, Pacazo should be considered a must-read.
July 3, 2012
This is the achingly beautiful story of John Segovia, an American living in Peru who is raising his daughter alone following the murder of his wife, which Segovia investigates. The investigation, which parallels his studies of local history, drives him to distraction (if not quite mad) and creates an endless stream of conflict and complications, just the sort of thing you want in a novel. The language here is unquestionably part of the point of this book. Read it slowly to luxuriate in the sentences, and you will be rewarded; or read it fast for the compelling story.
February 8, 2016
Highly recommended if you are a Peruvian living abroad.
The writer has dome some serious research on Peruvian folklore and history.
Although I am Peruvian, I have learned a few things such as the Pacazo and the matacojudos.
I got highly interested from the very first page when the authors describes the saying about the origin of the word PERU: "An Indian misspoke, a Spaniard misheard, and Peru has been fucked ever since".
The writer has dome some serious research on Peruvian folklore and history.
Although I am Peruvian, I have learned a few things such as the Pacazo and the matacojudos.
I got highly interested from the very first page when the authors describes the saying about the origin of the word PERU: "An Indian misspoke, a Spaniard misheard, and Peru has been fucked ever since".
February 9, 2011
Pacazo was the January selection for The Rumpus Book Club where subscribers get the book a month before publication.This was also the first Rumpus book with a super cool "A Rumpus Book Club Selection of the Month" seal on it. It made us feel kind of important in the literacy world. Anyway, the book was 531 pages, but for some reason Goodreads had it listed as 400 pages. My main issue with this book was that I believe it should have been 400 pages. There were too many wasteful moments that could have been spent discussing other things, or taken out of the novel completely. Pacazo is about a man named, John Segovia, who 300 days ago lost his wife, Pilar, after she was raped, beaten and left for dead in a Peruvian desert. John is left heartbroken and angry and tries to deal with his pain while raising his 11 month old daughter, Mariángel. The last time he saw his wife, she was getting into a "taxista" (which is basically a Spanish taxi), headed to the market. The only thing John remembers about the taxista is the license plate which started with a "P" (ironically, the first letter of his wife's name), and ended with a 22 (her age). Wherever John goes he searches for the taxista with this license plate. I had the impression that we were going to suffer along with John. We would grieve with him, and watch how his grief turned into anger. But John is already angry, actually he's crazy and in chapter 1, kills a taxista driver with the license plate beginning with a P, and ending with a 22, who may or may not have killed his wife. We watch him go deeper and deeper into madness trying to find his wife's killer(s?). The interesting thing about this novel is Kesey weaves history into the plot. The beginning of the sentence he is talking about the present, and all of sudden, using a conjunctive jump, added Peruvian history. Being a history nerd, I enjoyed reading these bits, but I thought that sometimes it was too much, and would have much rather read about John and his struggles. This is a story about tragedy, love, language, regret, and revenge. It was a powerful story, and without giving anything a way, I enjoyed the ending, and as a reader, I received some closure and was left with hope. Overall, a good read.
To read more of my reviews, go to my website: http://ladybugstorytime.blogspot.com/
To read more of my reviews, go to my website: http://ladybugstorytime.blogspot.com/
February 19, 2011
"It is unlike Arantxa to lean so heavily on any given conjunctive adverb."
4.5 overall.
4 for story, just a little too much of the protagonist's obsessing over particular details of historical events/people/etc.
5 for language/structure/tone/inventiveness/uniqueness. here are some quotes without context:
"i told them everything was fine, that there had been a sheep caught in my beard, but it hadn't stung me."
"i step carefully over the dike, pull her door closed, walk from darkness into darkness. the pots and pans and cans in the dining room are more than one sort of solution. i check the level of leakwater in each, ensure that none is more or less than half-full, and there was and is a single sentence of Oquendo's in a box at or near the middle of a poem at or near the middle of the book: Sadness is prohibited. This sentence is magical or dictatorial. I hope soon to decide."
" ... and in it are animal-oriented books for Mariángel - the bull, the ant and the elephant, the bears, the other elephant, the wild things and and the dog who does not like all but one of another dog's hats ..."
"This is what I understand by moments when she is called to the phone and says nothing upon returning, by moments when i ask if she wants, and before i can finish the sentence she says she won't be able."
"His laugh sounds like razors and rust."
"Mariángel starts to whine and so I invent a game. I pull a pretend needle bloodlessly but painfully through each of my fingers, then plunge it through my palm and pull it out the back of my hand. By tugging on the imaginary thread i can make my hand move amusingly. This terrifies Mariángel, and Karina shudders, and so do I: the back porch of my house in Daly City, my father's hand moving identically. I have invented nothing whatsoever. The feeling in my chest is half warmth and half disquiet."
"It is unlike Arantxa to lean so heavily on any given conjunctive adverb."
4.5 overall.
4 for story, just a little too much of the protagonist's obsessing over particular details of historical events/people/etc.
5 for language/structure/tone/inventiveness/uniqueness. here are some quotes without context:
"i told them everything was fine, that there had been a sheep caught in my beard, but it hadn't stung me."
"i step carefully over the dike, pull her door closed, walk from darkness into darkness. the pots and pans and cans in the dining room are more than one sort of solution. i check the level of leakwater in each, ensure that none is more or less than half-full, and there was and is a single sentence of Oquendo's in a box at or near the middle of a poem at or near the middle of the book: Sadness is prohibited. This sentence is magical or dictatorial. I hope soon to decide."
" ... and in it are animal-oriented books for Mariángel - the bull, the ant and the elephant, the bears, the other elephant, the wild things and and the dog who does not like all but one of another dog's hats ..."
"This is what I understand by moments when she is called to the phone and says nothing upon returning, by moments when i ask if she wants, and before i can finish the sentence she says she won't be able."
"His laugh sounds like razors and rust."
"Mariángel starts to whine and so I invent a game. I pull a pretend needle bloodlessly but painfully through each of my fingers, then plunge it through my palm and pull it out the back of my hand. By tugging on the imaginary thread i can make my hand move amusingly. This terrifies Mariángel, and Karina shudders, and so do I: the back porch of my house in Daly City, my father's hand moving identically. I have invented nothing whatsoever. The feeling in my chest is half warmth and half disquiet."
"It is unlike Arantxa to lean so heavily on any given conjunctive adverb."
August 12, 2025
Phew---I actually finished this long ago, in June, on a train in Italy somewhere. Fantastic novel. If I had to pick one word to describe both the novel and my experience reading it, it would be 'swimming'. The narrator's consciousness is constantly slipping through time, languages, memories, inner- and outer dialogues--there are all of these currents moving along simultaneously, plot slithering seamlessly among them. It was a little tough to get used to at first, but once you're further through the book you have more context to relate these bits and pieces to.
I also loved his collection of short stories, All Over, and look forward to getting my hands on his novella Nothing In The World and whatever he publishes next!
I also loved his collection of short stories, All Over, and look forward to getting my hands on his novella Nothing In The World and whatever he publishes next!
August 21, 2011
I much prefer how Kesey handles the narrative of an American in another country than many other contemporary authors I've seen. He seems intimately familiar with his setting and knows how to bring this across to the reader, but he doesn't get caught up in it. He isn't excessively in love with it and doesn't let it get in the way of his story. It is just there, as it is, vivid as anything but not set on a display shelf like a pretty bauble. Good thing too, because Kesey has a good story. I particularly like how the narrative weaves in and out of the present, memory, and history - often in the same paragraph. It shouldn't work, but it does. Quite well. I was certainly impressed and I enjoyed reading.
May 24, 2012
Love the interwoven stories, the personal and the historical. Roy's delightful writing makes this long journey a pleasurable one. Your heart goes out to this widower who's chasing after his lost past and after his wife's murderer while taking care of a child.
January 22, 2011
First book of the year for the RBC. Overall, enjoyable. Makes you appreciate what you have and how to find light after tragedy. Excellent narrative weaving between main story and history of Peru.
January 20, 2011
I have just closed the green cloth cover on Pacazo and I am somewhere on the map between "like" and "really like". I suspect that this is a book that benefits from multiple readings.
June 6, 2011
Great book. I highly recommend it, especially to my friends who've spent time in Peru. Kesey captures the atmosphere beautifully.
July 31, 2013
Easily places among the best books I've ever read. The style, pace, and voice of this book are masterful.
May 11, 2012
Now one of my favorite novels.
January 8, 2013
2013 book 3.
It's not a gimmick: It's actually how we think! Present, past, future, people, places things all in a stream of thought.
It's not a gimmick: It's actually how we think! Present, past, future, people, places things all in a stream of thought.
August 27, 2013
I think I want to give it a 4.5 really but although I usually push down, in this case I'm going up because I kept dreaming about this book. Not just about the character but about the sentences. And not really about the sentences but about the cadences. I mean that the rhythms have taken over my dreams. And also the images sometimes, the sea swarming in during El Nino, and the jungle, the Conquistadors fighting so hard and the Inca fighting back so hard and everyone in over their heads.
I don't like to write the kind of reviews that summarize the book, but in this case it's actually kind of easy because although the book is long, probably too long, the story is not. An American teaching English in Peru is raising his toddler in the wake of the rape and murder of his Peruvian wife. He's trying to find the killer because the local police, he tells himself, are incompetent. Meanwhile, the city is drowning in an excessively heavy rainy season. He's supposed to be working on his doctorate, about Pizarro's conquest of Peru, and so his thoughts as he navigates daily life as a foreigner in Piura, as a grieving husband and father, are often interwoven--we are always everything we are, all that we know and are trying to discover--so as he walks the deluged city and the desert he is also deluged with what he knows about the history of Peru and what he remembers about his life in America and his life with his wife.
(One gift of the book was the way it revealed the complexity of the Conquest. My main familiarity with this topic comes from 1491. I wish, since John Segovia knows so much about the Conquest, he'd gone into the role disease had played in upending the Incan political structure before Pizarro ever arrived--Mann makes it sound as though the Conquistadors would have had no chance in hell without that element.)
It's interesting throughout, even when I wish the pace/story would pick up. And even when I start to dislike the guy (and do not stop). Even when I stop caring whether things work out for him, this approach to narrative does not fail me. Where did I stop caring? When he did in the dog. Look. This is a guy who worries about geckos and toads and he never pauses over the dog. That's when I thought we knew for sure who this guy was and I would not have batted one eye if this novel had taken a Peter Cameron Andorra-like turn after that. I was okay with whatever he wanted to do with the taxistas (and I thought the first one was just a fantasy but am open), but leave the dogs alone. I don't need to like the guy--see Larry Brown's Father and Son--I'm just saying that this episode and the fact that he *does not stop,* does not berate himself...this is where you see what kind of pacazo this guy is. Only it's even worse. Pacazo is too kind.
IMO he didn't really love either of his women. Re Pilar, the murdered wife, it seemed to be just that Pilar was beautiful and inexplicably loved him. I guess it's enough for a lot of guys, and that's always a little disturbing. And it was kind of the same with Karina. That she would love him was enough for John, it seemed. (My guess is that if she comes to America, she'll ditch him, I hope there's a sequel from her POV.) She seems to do all the caretaking. But he doesn't seem to be concerned about her at all--it was all her taking care of him, her knowing what to do for him.
I would have been more interested in his healing process if he'd moved on from Karina, actually. Or at least this would have signalled a healthier process. I thought maybe he would date a few different people as he healed, rather than falling in love with the first woman who came along. Though men so often do this, according to studies I've seen. And I hoped that maybe he would have the character and sense to actually fall in love with Arantxa, instead of some young chica. Borrring, once more. Because predictable. It wasn't that Karina wasn't interesting in her own right (especially as seen through his eyes, right? Men always say, but she is so mature. So fiery, so interesting. Whatever. And of course it's so amazing that she knows just what to do with the baby. Magic.).
Back to John. Let's consider his weight. He is a fat man, according to him, who shares the last name of a Conquistador. It's not clear exactly how fat he is. He implies he's obese, but he doesn't seem to eat an exceptional amount and he gets around well--he walks everywhere, he industriously builds concrete dykes across every threshold in his house during flooding, he sits down the ground and seems to get up easily enough, he bushwacks through areas with heavy underbrush, he leaps into the sea without hesitation, he even runs for some distance on several occasions. He doesn't seem to be particularly upset or repulsed by his weight, so I think it's meant to be his baggage, his guilt, his American-ness, and even the exactitude of his grammar (which isn't ALWAYS correct, by the way; I caught him using lay for lie and I for me :D). In the end, as he takes his daughter away from her grandparents, takes the research material a friend has found, and heads home, he's just the Gorilla grabbing all the bananas, as John says at one point, explaining American imperialism. John's morality, his rectitude, his concern for others, his loyalty, even his love--they are capricious. No agile pacazo, he throws his weight around, as America does, as Spain did, as the Incas did. Unlike America, John doesn't kid himself that he is the good guy, but he likes to imagine that he is helpful. He gives money to his maid, pays extra to the tour guides who know their stuff. However, he just bashes around and he doesn't really care who gets hurt; his indifference to all--his mother, his daughter, his wife, his friends, the rules his boss is always forced to bend for him, the culture that surrounds him (he knows a lot about it, but doesn't actually honor it)--is as killing as the air at 14,000 feet. He feels principles (don't kill the geckos), but not pain, aside from his own (don't take away my beautiful bride, the one I could never replicate in the States, and oh, my poor wounded finger).
And that's what makes the book, finally, both so beautiful and so sad. The Conquistadors wanted to be beautiful. They wanted to be heroes. They wanted, in their own way, to make the world better, for God. The Inca too were concerned with beauty, and with their gods, and even with redistributing wealth and staving off the hunger of the poorest among their subjects. Both of those systems were incredibly violent. Everything since has been enormously sure of itself and enormously violent. Here we are, still trying to do good, still wreaking havoc. Still really fucking fat. Still loving, for all the wrong reasons. Still trying to to force the world to love us back.
Imagine being able to say all that in a way that brings so many layers of time, so much information about so many people, places, and histories together--often in a single sentence.
Here are some samples of the writing. On touring an Alcatraz-like prison on the coast of Peru: "I was led into solitary confinement, and was astounded: the deep sudden dark, the strangled wait that would not end."
As an example of how Kesey turns the narrative in and out of time: "I have been this tired before but do not remember when and a ship drifts south along the coast toward the mouth of a river." (First half of the sentence is present time and then you are back at the Conquest.)
Other stuff that's just beautiful/on point...
"I explain that one can also use the third conditional to express regret. If I had. If I hadn't. I wish I had. I wish I hadn't. I put the students in pairs and force them to regret things they would otherwise never have considered."
"And there are things one must know from inside them. The rain, for example. Elsewhere one is told that rain is a temporal thing, that it started at twelve-thirty and ended at twenty past four. This is a sort of lie. Rain is spatial, and this will be known on the river: the rain comes, an opaque curtain, a line on the black water... "
I don't like to write the kind of reviews that summarize the book, but in this case it's actually kind of easy because although the book is long, probably too long, the story is not. An American teaching English in Peru is raising his toddler in the wake of the rape and murder of his Peruvian wife. He's trying to find the killer because the local police, he tells himself, are incompetent. Meanwhile, the city is drowning in an excessively heavy rainy season. He's supposed to be working on his doctorate, about Pizarro's conquest of Peru, and so his thoughts as he navigates daily life as a foreigner in Piura, as a grieving husband and father, are often interwoven--we are always everything we are, all that we know and are trying to discover--so as he walks the deluged city and the desert he is also deluged with what he knows about the history of Peru and what he remembers about his life in America and his life with his wife.
(One gift of the book was the way it revealed the complexity of the Conquest. My main familiarity with this topic comes from 1491. I wish, since John Segovia knows so much about the Conquest, he'd gone into the role disease had played in upending the Incan political structure before Pizarro ever arrived--Mann makes it sound as though the Conquistadors would have had no chance in hell without that element.)
It's interesting throughout, even when I wish the pace/story would pick up. And even when I start to dislike the guy (and do not stop). Even when I stop caring whether things work out for him, this approach to narrative does not fail me. Where did I stop caring? When he did in the dog. Look. This is a guy who worries about geckos and toads and he never pauses over the dog. That's when I thought we knew for sure who this guy was and I would not have batted one eye if this novel had taken a Peter Cameron Andorra-like turn after that. I was okay with whatever he wanted to do with the taxistas (and I thought the first one was just a fantasy but am open), but leave the dogs alone. I don't need to like the guy--see Larry Brown's Father and Son--I'm just saying that this episode and the fact that he *does not stop,* does not berate himself...this is where you see what kind of pacazo this guy is. Only it's even worse. Pacazo is too kind.
IMO he didn't really love either of his women. Re Pilar, the murdered wife, it seemed to be just that Pilar was beautiful and inexplicably loved him. I guess it's enough for a lot of guys, and that's always a little disturbing. And it was kind of the same with Karina. That she would love him was enough for John, it seemed. (My guess is that if she comes to America, she'll ditch him, I hope there's a sequel from her POV.) She seems to do all the caretaking. But he doesn't seem to be concerned about her at all--it was all her taking care of him, her knowing what to do for him.
I would have been more interested in his healing process if he'd moved on from Karina, actually. Or at least this would have signalled a healthier process. I thought maybe he would date a few different people as he healed, rather than falling in love with the first woman who came along. Though men so often do this, according to studies I've seen. And I hoped that maybe he would have the character and sense to actually fall in love with Arantxa, instead of some young chica. Borrring, once more. Because predictable. It wasn't that Karina wasn't interesting in her own right (especially as seen through his eyes, right? Men always say, but she is so mature. So fiery, so interesting. Whatever. And of course it's so amazing that she knows just what to do with the baby. Magic.).
Back to John. Let's consider his weight. He is a fat man, according to him, who shares the last name of a Conquistador. It's not clear exactly how fat he is. He implies he's obese, but he doesn't seem to eat an exceptional amount and he gets around well--he walks everywhere, he industriously builds concrete dykes across every threshold in his house during flooding, he sits down the ground and seems to get up easily enough, he bushwacks through areas with heavy underbrush, he leaps into the sea without hesitation, he even runs for some distance on several occasions. He doesn't seem to be particularly upset or repulsed by his weight, so I think it's meant to be his baggage, his guilt, his American-ness, and even the exactitude of his grammar (which isn't ALWAYS correct, by the way; I caught him using lay for lie and I for me :D). In the end, as he takes his daughter away from her grandparents, takes the research material a friend has found, and heads home, he's just the Gorilla grabbing all the bananas, as John says at one point, explaining American imperialism. John's morality, his rectitude, his concern for others, his loyalty, even his love--they are capricious. No agile pacazo, he throws his weight around, as America does, as Spain did, as the Incas did. Unlike America, John doesn't kid himself that he is the good guy, but he likes to imagine that he is helpful. He gives money to his maid, pays extra to the tour guides who know their stuff. However, he just bashes around and he doesn't really care who gets hurt; his indifference to all--his mother, his daughter, his wife, his friends, the rules his boss is always forced to bend for him, the culture that surrounds him (he knows a lot about it, but doesn't actually honor it)--is as killing as the air at 14,000 feet. He feels principles (don't kill the geckos), but not pain, aside from his own (don't take away my beautiful bride, the one I could never replicate in the States, and oh, my poor wounded finger).
And that's what makes the book, finally, both so beautiful and so sad. The Conquistadors wanted to be beautiful. They wanted to be heroes. They wanted, in their own way, to make the world better, for God. The Inca too were concerned with beauty, and with their gods, and even with redistributing wealth and staving off the hunger of the poorest among their subjects. Both of those systems were incredibly violent. Everything since has been enormously sure of itself and enormously violent. Here we are, still trying to do good, still wreaking havoc. Still really fucking fat. Still loving, for all the wrong reasons. Still trying to to force the world to love us back.
Imagine being able to say all that in a way that brings so many layers of time, so much information about so many people, places, and histories together--often in a single sentence.
Here are some samples of the writing. On touring an Alcatraz-like prison on the coast of Peru: "I was led into solitary confinement, and was astounded: the deep sudden dark, the strangled wait that would not end."
As an example of how Kesey turns the narrative in and out of time: "I have been this tired before but do not remember when and a ship drifts south along the coast toward the mouth of a river." (First half of the sentence is present time and then you are back at the Conquest.)
Other stuff that's just beautiful/on point...
"I explain that one can also use the third conditional to express regret. If I had. If I hadn't. I wish I had. I wish I hadn't. I put the students in pairs and force them to regret things they would otherwise never have considered."
"And there are things one must know from inside them. The rain, for example. Elsewhere one is told that rain is a temporal thing, that it started at twelve-thirty and ended at twenty past four. This is a sort of lie. Rain is spatial, and this will be known on the river: the rain comes, an opaque curtain, a line on the black water... "
June 23, 2021
Could not get into this book. Story seemed very disjointed with too much jumping around. No character development. After 10% I gave up.
March 8, 2022
I hope vengeance was served.
June 24, 2011
My overall feeling about this was...enh. The story and characters aren't uninteresting, but the author employs a particular stream of consciousness style of writing that drives me right up the wall. It's the kind of stream of consciousness where when the thought jumps from one subject to the next, the connection between the thoughts is so tenuous that it only makes sense to the person having the thoughts. When you add in that half the thoughts the main character is having are about the Spanish conquering the Incas in the 1500s and I know exactly zero about Peruvian history..... This is a long-winded way of saying that the story isn't bad, but I don't like the author's style. E for effort.
Read
October 26, 2013This was my first venture into e-books and e-readers, and I found it very frustrating quite apart from adjusting to Kesey's remarkable shifts in time, space, and subject. While the e-reader, seemingly of its own volition, jumped from page to page, I struggled to keep up with what appeared to be the psychotic (at the very least obsessive) mind of the protagonist. This book did eventually catch me, hold me, in spite of my adventure with technology.
July 9, 2014
Rache warm vom Baum serviert
Das Land Peru, seine älteste spanische Stadt Piura, die Inkas, Konquistadoren, die zweijährige Tochter und die ermordete Ehefrau umgeben als Figuren den Helden im Jetzt, der erst ein Phantom jagen muss, um wieder zu sich selbst zu finden.
>>> Besprechung ...
>>> Weitere Bücher Juli ...
Das Land Peru, seine älteste spanische Stadt Piura, die Inkas, Konquistadoren, die zweijährige Tochter und die ermordete Ehefrau umgeben als Figuren den Helden im Jetzt, der erst ein Phantom jagen muss, um wieder zu sich selbst zu finden.
>>> Besprechung ...
>>> Weitere Bücher Juli ...
October 7, 2013
This is another one of those books that was clearly well written, but I struggled through it because it was so depressing. The main character, an American expat in Peru, is so messed up by the murder of his Peruvian wife that he's uncomfortable to read about. On the plus side, it's made me interested in trying some Peruvian food.
April 15, 2014
A stunning and poetic book about an American living in Peru with the ghost of his past wife whose body has never been found. This haunted man wants to find out what became of her as well as to be able to leave it behind and go on with his life. The descriptions of the country and the culture are equally mesmerizing.
Want to read
January 1, 2012Still reading!
January 11, 2014
I liked it whilst I read it, but I sometimes found it difficult to get back into it.
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