The Histories of Violence
Two novels of murder and survival in Colombia.
Whereas Mr. Grostephan accosts you with pungent sensory description, Mr. Vásquez is psychological and abstract. “Fear,” Antonio says, “was the main ailment of Bogotanos of my generation”; elsewhere he likens that fear to a contagion, a contamination and a plague. Much of his narrative is shaped by an obsessive attention to minuscule gestures or details. Ordering coffee, Antonio watches a waitress wipe the table with “a melancholy, stinking rag”: “I saw her dry knuckles, crisscrossed by gritty lines; a specter of steam rose from the blackish liquid.” The effect is awkwardly portentous.
Bogotá is not yet available on zkindle, but I’ll be reading both.
