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A review by millennial_dandy
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories by Luis Sepúlveda
3.0
"The eyes of fear can see you"
'The Old Man Who Read Love Stories' is a clear-cut novella of the 'man vs. nature' variety. It's about humans wrestling against (and often losing to) the Amazon rainforest. Anyone unwilling to bow to their jungle overlord risks all manner of unpleasant death, or at the very least, discomfort and struggle.
The plot revolves around the titular love story reading old man, Antonio Jose Bolivar, who, despite never quite being fully accepted by the native population, is at least on good terms with them, and lives a comparable lifestyle, though he flits back and forth between the world of the jungle and the world of civilization.
He finds himself at loggerheads with the village mayor, a man as far removed from 'at one' with nature as one can be, a man who struggles to bring the village, and the jungle by extension, to heel.
When it's discovered that a white 'gringo' killed a litter of ocelot cubs and was subsequently killed by a now vengeful adult female, nature and man collide, and Antonio Jose Bolivar finds himself trapped between two worlds: the one to which he belongs but despises (civilization) and the one he loves and respects, but to which he'll never belong (nature).
It's a familiar folktale in which civilization --> bad, nature--> good, but author Luis Sepulveda tries to complicate it by tying civilization to colonialism in ways that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, and it could feel a tad preachy, as folktales like this one can.
It reminded me strongly of John Steinbeck's 'The Pearl'. Similar lengths, similarly straightforward moralities, simple, easy to follow plots, but the writing chops to keep you invested.
The Raleigh News & Observer said it well: "Sepulveda writes with a keen sense of irony and humor as harsh and colorful as the jungle itself."
I picked it up rather at random at a used bookshop and got hooked by the banger of a first line: "The sky was a donkey's swollen paunch hanging threateningly low overhead."
The strange specificity and oddness of the line is exemplary of the type of writing you're in for as we follow one man's tug of war of longing for a civilized world he's known only through books, and his love of his home on the outskirts of the Amazon.
This is also a love letter to fiction, and how a love of reading can transcend almost anything. "He possessed the antidote to the deadly poison of old age. He could read." (p.52)
'The Old Man Who Read Love Stories' is a clear-cut novella of the 'man vs. nature' variety. It's about humans wrestling against (and often losing to) the Amazon rainforest. Anyone unwilling to bow to their jungle overlord risks all manner of unpleasant death, or at the very least, discomfort and struggle.
The plot revolves around the titular love story reading old man, Antonio Jose Bolivar, who, despite never quite being fully accepted by the native population, is at least on good terms with them, and lives a comparable lifestyle, though he flits back and forth between the world of the jungle and the world of civilization.
He finds himself at loggerheads with the village mayor, a man as far removed from 'at one' with nature as one can be, a man who struggles to bring the village, and the jungle by extension, to heel.
When it's discovered that a white 'gringo' killed a litter of ocelot cubs and was subsequently killed by a now vengeful adult female, nature and man collide, and Antonio Jose Bolivar finds himself trapped between two worlds: the one to which he belongs but despises (civilization) and the one he loves and respects, but to which he'll never belong (nature).
It's a familiar folktale in which civilization --> bad, nature--> good, but author Luis Sepulveda tries to complicate it by tying civilization to colonialism in ways that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, and it could feel a tad preachy, as folktales like this one can.
It reminded me strongly of John Steinbeck's 'The Pearl'. Similar lengths, similarly straightforward moralities, simple, easy to follow plots, but the writing chops to keep you invested.
The Raleigh News & Observer said it well: "Sepulveda writes with a keen sense of irony and humor as harsh and colorful as the jungle itself."
I picked it up rather at random at a used bookshop and got hooked by the banger of a first line: "The sky was a donkey's swollen paunch hanging threateningly low overhead."
The strange specificity and oddness of the line is exemplary of the type of writing you're in for as we follow one man's tug of war of longing for a civilized world he's known only through books, and his love of his home on the outskirts of the Amazon.
This is also a love letter to fiction, and how a love of reading can transcend almost anything. "He possessed the antidote to the deadly poison of old age. He could read." (p.52)