Review by Booklist Review
Vásquez (Song for the Flames, 2012) notes in his afterword that this is "a work of fiction, but there are no imaginary episodes in it." Based on interviews and documentation of the remarkable real-life Colombian Cabrera family, it focuses on auteur filmmaker Sergio Cabrera, his famous actor father, and his sister, Marianella. The result is a globe-trotting narrative encompassing the Spanish Civil War, Mao's China, war-torn Colombia, and near-present Europe. The story begins in Lisbon, where Sergio has paused to visit his estranged wife and daughter before heading to Barcelona for a retrospective celebrating his career. He receives news that his nonagenarian father, Fausto, has died, tilting his world on its axis. So begins Sergio's life retrospective. The tale's longest stretches cover Sergio and Marianella's involvement in communist revolutions in China and Colombia. Ideological and relationship dynamics frequently seem surreal in the way only real life can, and Vásquez's novel reads like a documentary because it essentially is. He hews so closely to a biographical structure that engagement and pacing sometimes suffer, yet readers will marvel over the incredible breadth of the Cabreras' lives.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Vásquez (The Shape of the Ruins) returns with a dramatic if bloated epic based on the lives of Colombian filmmaker Sergio Cabrera and his father, Fausto, an actor turned revolutionary. Days before a Catalonian retrospective honoring Sergio's films in 2016, Sergio learns of Fausto's death in Colombia. Sergio opts to stay in Spain rather than attend the funeral, and the novel travels back and forth in time, recounting the history of the Cabreras and tracking Sergio throughout the festival. Fausto, transplanted to Latin America during the Spanish Civil War, has two children in Bogotá with his wife, Luz Elena, and works as a performer and director on early Colombian television. Fausto and Luz both support FARC, the nation's revolutionary movement, and in 1961 they move the family to Maoist China, where Sergio and his sister, Marianella, join the Red Guard as children. In their late teens, the children return to Colombia to become guerrillas. Back in 2016, Sergio watches his films with his teenage son, Raúl, and tells him stories of their exploits. The narrative has its share of exciting moments amid Colombia's historical turmoil, yet Vásquez's intense attention to detail and frequent historical asides tend to bog things down. This frustrates as much as it fascinates. Agent: Maria Lynch, Casanovas & Lynch Literary Agency. (May)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In this latest from IMPAC award winner Vásquez (The Sound of Things Falling), director Sergio Cabrera is attending a retrospective film festival in his honor when he receives news of the accidental death of his father, the actor Fausto Cabrera. From there begins another instance of retrospection, as the narration jumps back to Sergio's grandparents and their involvement on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. They escape across the ocean, ultimately settling in Colombia. Recruited to teach Spanish, the family moves to the China and embraces communism, working on a communal farm and in factories; Sergio and his sister Marianella train as underground guerrilla fighters, spreading their ideology to Colombia under deplorable conditions in the jungle. They ultimately abandon communism, disillusioned with its myopia, and the narrative is pervaded by a strong presence of the past and the power of memory that typifies Vásquez's work. Despite the strong portrayal of apparently fictional characters, this is ultimately a work of autofiction closely based on the real lives of film director Cabrera and his thespian father, with Vásquez basing his narrative on interviews and other media. VERDICT Here, truth really is stranger than fiction--or in this case, more "novelable"--and the retention of the photos and excerpts of Marianella's diary from the Spanish text contributes to the veracity of an engaging work.--Lawrence Olszewski
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An acclaimed director looks back on an adolescence shaped by Maoism and guerrilla warfare. Vásquez's new novel is based on the real-life Colombian filmmaker Sergio Cabrera, who, as the story opens, is thrust into the past for a host of reasons. He's presiding over a retrospective of his movies in Barcelona, which his ancestors fled to escape the Spanish Civil War; he's attempting to reconnect with his son and his shaky marriage; and, most disruptive of all, he's received word that his father has died back in Bogotá. Practically by force, Sergio's mind casts back to his parents' lives as theater and TV figures in Colombia and the family's eventual move to Peking (as it was then known), where they embrace Maoism even while witnessing the violence of the Cultural Revolution. In the late 1960s, Sergio and his sister, Marianella, return to Colombia and participate in the Communist guerrilla movement there. With increasing frequency, the siblings become disillusioned with the rigidity and hypocrisy of the Communist leaders they encounter and are both psychologically and physically wounded by it. Still, Vásquez's portrait of Sergio--based on more than 30 hours of interviews with Cabrera, according to an author's note--isn't simply a critique of authoritarian doctrine. Rather, the story is a more tender bildungsroman about the ways that heartbreak and political disillusionment intertwine to form our personalities; Sergio's ideological development is braided with scenes of young romance and his growing enchantment with filmmaking. The book bears some of the stiffness of heavy research, at times reading more like a biography than a novel, complete with family photos. But it's a strong entry in the author's careerlong exploration of the ways the political winds can change an artist's fortunes. A sharp study of the perils of ideology in collision with art. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
