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8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Such fine fretwork by a narrative musician, 5 Feb 2002
There is, I think, much music in everything de Bernieres has written. "Sunday Morning..." is a score sheet for voices and accents; "Corelli" is filed with the strings and the song of Italian opera; and the South American trilogy is suffused with a tropical rhythm all of its own. The man Louis himself, so I believe, is something of a musical enthusiast.And as with all good music, there should be drink, there should be women and there should be magic. When these collide, of course, then there will be violence. In "Senor Vivo" there is, in abundance. But it as vicious and as hard as it is romantic and poetic. And it is the balance of these factors - as with "Corelli" - that makes this book so fantastic, in both senses of the word. You can laugh and you can marvel at the tantric science of the President's lovemaking, but you will soon crumble at the prospect of what happens to Vivo's little Bugsita. The horror takes your breath away. And it is good for a book about the drugs trade to be so visceral. Amongst the fantasy there is a very real and very vivid truth being told. The previous reviewer evidently disagrees. They are wrong. "Opinion, opinion..." you might well think, but no, then you would be wrong. It is not simply the facile "po-mo", "lit. crit." generally jargonese dismissal of magic realism that is misplaced (the magic of the book, in fact, is an evocation of the spiritual jungle and sierra Indians and their influence on the culture of this South American Erehwon), but the whole tenor of the argument is predicated on a lie. The book is not self-indulgent, it does not have an overarching personal agenda and it certainly does not disenfranchise the emotions of the reader. What it does is entertain, gloriously. The narrative is never forced, but instead it plays out delicately in front of you with interweaving narratives and intimate portraits of endless fascinating characters. And yes, it does have a political message, but it is not forced down the reader's throat ("inexcusably pornographic", really, just no). Rather it cuts to the core in the most direct and clinical of ways. We may read about the coca trade in Colombia, but it's a far away, unrealised and dismissable problem - "yeah, I've heard there's a war going on over there. Don't suppose anyone cares though...they're all on drugs". In "Senor Vivo" the laughter dies on the cold reality of torture. And never are we more sober than when the joke is cut short.
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by Louis De Bernieres
by Louis De Bernieres
by Louis De Bernieres
by Louis De Bernieres
