From Publishers Weekly
Aguilar, a former literature professor who now "delivers dog food in order to survive" returns from a trip to find his beloved wife, Agustina, has "transformed into someone terrified and terrifying"; his subsequent investigation into what happened forms the plot of this complex and captivating novel, Restrepo's sixth novel to be translated into English (after
Isle of Passion). In reconstructing Agustina's privileged but troubled past, the novel intertwines several narratives, including the braggadocio of Agustina's former lover—and Pablo Escobar money launderer—Midas McAlister; the tragic tale of her German grandfather, Nicholas Portulinus; and Agustina's own pained reminiscences of a childhood centered around an aloof and domineering father whose affection she tried to win and from whose abuse she tried to protect her younger brother. It seems that Agustina's madness sprouts from a denial of violence and obvious truths—a denial that is shown here to similarly corrupt Colombian society. It has all the tension of a great detective story, and Wimmer's translation captures every tormented bit of Aguilar's desperation.
(Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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With each book Restrepo, a former Colombian journalist active in radical politics, garners more awards. In her most astutely structured and psychologically gripping novel to date, she looks back to the catastrophic reign of drug trafficker Pablo Escobar and funnels all the violence, greed, fear, and cynicism at loose in the land into the damaged psyche of a beautiful woman. Agustina's Bogota family is rich and troubled, and she is burdened by psychic powers. When her husband, a literature professor fallen on hard times, returns from a short trip, he finds Agustina in a hotel and out of her mind. As he struggles to piece together the events that precipitated her worst breakdown yet, Restrepo slowly unveils the baroque secrets of Agustina's German immigrant grandfather, her aunt Sofi's true role in the household, the plight of her gay brother, and shocking encounters with a gangster known as Midas. Restrepo's shrewd, darkly erotic, and biting psychopolitical drama nets Colombia's magic and sorrows, and maps the damage wrought as delirium seizes individuals, a family, and a nation.
Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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