This was an ambitious book that I’m glad I finally read. Set in Chile, it walks the line between biography, magic and fiction. I really like stories that span generations, especially towards the end where we can look back to where things started and make connections.
Any time you are reading a translation you need to keep that in mind while interpreting the writing, but this particular translation from Spanish to English is phenomenal. It comes across naturally and rarely felt awkward.
As for the writing style itself I often felt overwhelmed – the story is presented as a giant wall of text and breaks are rare. This is a long book, and sometimes it was hard to keep going after a long block of text. The writer also was fond of foreshadowing, which was used skillfully most of the time. After a while I started to dread the foreshadowing drops, it started to feel like a gimmick to me.
This was a long story and it took me a long time to finish it, but the conclusion was well worth it.
Next I am reading All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu.
