“I hear the dogs howling and I let them howl, because I know there aren’t any dogs here anymore. And on windy days you can hear the wind shaking the leaves, but you already know there aren’t any trees.”
On his mother’s lat request before she died, Juan Preciado visited Comala to find his father, Pedro paramo. There he encountered ghosts of people who used to live in the now deserted town. The novel is kind of strange, but interesting and likeable, because at some point it is Juan’s dead self that is talking to long dead people. This is how Juan learned about his father’s story.
This short novel by the great Mexican writer, Juan Rulfo, is a magical realism with some sort of Faulknerian feel so that sometimes it is quite difficult to discern who’s narrating. This novel is said to have influenced Gabriel Garcia Marquez' magical realism masterworks.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
{09 January 2010}
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