Tochtli lives in a palace. He loves hats, samurai, guillotines and dictionaries, and what he wants more than anything right now is a new pet for his private zoo: a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia. But Tochtli is a child whose father is a drug baron on the verge of taking over a cartel, and Tochtli is growing up in a luxury hideout that he shares with hit men, dealers, and the odd corrupt politician or two. Down the Rabbit Hole, a masterful and darkly-comic first novel, is the chronicle of a delirious journey to grant a child's wish.
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'A pint-size novel about innocence, beastliness and a child learning the lingo in a drug wonderland. Funny, convincing, appalling, it's a punch-packer for one so small.' Ali Smith, Book of the Year, Daily Telegraph. 'Down the Rabbit Hole is a miniature high-speed experiment with perspective - a deliberate, wild attack on the conventions of literature.' Adam Thirlwell. 'That rarest of animals, a book that is, to all intents and purposes, perfect.' Sarah Churchwell, Book of the Year, New Statesman. 'Juan Pablo Villalobos, channeled Mexico's drug wars via the voice of a narco-baron's son in his touching and invigorating Down the Rabbit Hole.' Boyd Tonkin, in his round-up of the year's best fiction, The Independent. 'If you're going to have an imprisoned child narrate a novel, then not so much as a word should be out of place. There are no such slips in Juan Pablo Villalobos's debut novella. We have here a control over the material which is so tight it is almost claustrophobic. [...] This is a novel about failing to understand the bigger picture, and in its absence we can see it more clearly.' Nicholas Lezard, Choice of the Week, The Guardian. 'The cumulative parodic effect is chillingly powerful.' Edward King, Sunday Times. 'Juan Pablo Villalobos brilliantly encapsulates the chaos of a lawless existence in which, under the sway of drug lords, anything might happen and everything goes. [...] Down the Rabbit Hole is an astonishing debut from Villalobos' Lucy Popescu, The Independent. Villalobos creates Tochtli's half-corrupt, half-innocent world [...] with a brilliant, tragi-comic light touch.' Jane Shilling, Daily Mail. 'Refreshingly original' Angel Gurria-Quintana, FT. 'A beautifully realised short novel that narrates the daily life of a powerful drug lord ensconced in his palatial hideaway, seen through the clear eyes of his young son ... A brief and majestic debut that converts the 'drug novel' into a fascinating narrative.' Matias Nespolo, El Mundo.
About the Author
Juan Pablo Villalobos was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1973. He now lives in Madrid, Spain, and has two Mexican-Brazilian-Italian-Catalan children. Down the Rabbit Hole is his first novel and is being translated into seven languages.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By Eleanor
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The narrator of this novella is the child of a Mexican drug lord living in lonely luxury in a heavily guarded palace. Tochtli is both childishly innocent and also horribly knowledgeable about things like bullets, corpses, and their disposal.
Juan Pablo Villalobos (and Rosalind Harvey the translator) have got Tochtli's voice spot on. This child's obsessions (hats and Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses among other things), petulant scorn, and relish in words like 'sordid', 'immaculate', and 'enigmatic', are amusing and charming. The reader, however, is also aware of the loneliness of Tochtli's life and the dangerous undercurrents of his father's business. A sense of unease, which sometimes turns into outright horror, is present throughout.
I very much enjoyed this novella (ideally read in one sitting) and I felt immersed in its world, admiring what Villalobos reveals through the voice of his naive narrator. "Down the Rabbit Hole" which is the first publication of the small press And Other Stories is nicely presented and comes with both a glossary explaining some of the Mexican references and an introduction by Adam Thirlwell.
Juan Pablo Villalobos (and Rosalind Harvey the translator) have got Tochtli's voice spot on. This child's obsessions (hats and Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses among other things), petulant scorn, and relish in words like 'sordid', 'immaculate', and 'enigmatic', are amusing and charming. The reader, however, is also aware of the loneliness of Tochtli's life and the dangerous undercurrents of his father's business. A sense of unease, which sometimes turns into outright horror, is present throughout.
I very much enjoyed this novella (ideally read in one sitting) and I felt immersed in its world, admiring what Villalobos reveals through the voice of his naive narrator. "Down the Rabbit Hole" which is the first publication of the small press And Other Stories is nicely presented and comes with both a glossary explaining some of the Mexican references and an introduction by Adam Thirlwell.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By DME2707
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Very cleverly written. Seemingly about a small child in a violent adult world however, it is a message about the dangers of allowing our children to be brainwashed by the never ending bombardment of violent games and pornography. It is shocking in its juxtaposition of the innocence of the small child and the violence of the world in which it lives. There is an undercurrent of menace and violence that pervades throughout.Very very good.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Antenna
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
This is a good translation from the original Spanish of a well-written novella from the viewpoint of a young Mexican boy. Tochtli, whose father is a drug baron. For obvious reasons, Tochtli lives in a bizarre heavily-guarded world of obscene luxury, and brutal amorality, where his father allows him to see men being tortured, as part of ensuring he grows up to be suitably macho, and Tochtli casually announces that the corpses of those who have fallen foul of his father end up being fed to the lions and tiger kept in cages in the garden. The boy is obsessed with death, body parts and the number of bullets needed to kill people, according to the organ damaged. His corrupted child's perception of the world is darkly tragicomical, his misreading of situations, such as the visits of a prostitute for his father, sometimes amusing, his casual acceptance of violence and lack of "normal" feeling are often shocking although understandable.
This is an imaginative but bleak parody of the predicament of a child, subject to a distorted socialisation, deprived of the company of other children so unable to relate to them, indulged by having his every material whim satisfied, even to the extent of being taken to Liberia to capture a pair of the pygmy hippopotami with which he has become obsessed, bored by the narrow repetition of his daily life. His only real moment of closeness with his father is when the latter says that one day Tochtli will have to kill him to save his honour i.e from gaol, like a samurai in one of the violent films they love to watch.
Something of a "one trick pony" in the essential point made, the book can be read too quickly for you to worry that you may have wasted your time.
This is an imaginative but bleak parody of the predicament of a child, subject to a distorted socialisation, deprived of the company of other children so unable to relate to them, indulged by having his every material whim satisfied, even to the extent of being taken to Liberia to capture a pair of the pygmy hippopotami with which he has become obsessed, bored by the narrow repetition of his daily life. His only real moment of closeness with his father is when the latter says that one day Tochtli will have to kill him to save his honour i.e from gaol, like a samurai in one of the violent films they love to watch.
Something of a "one trick pony" in the essential point made, the book can be read too quickly for you to worry that you may have wasted your time.
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