Publisher’s write-up:
‘In this stunning masterpiece of the surreal, Juan Preciado sets out on a strange quest, bound by a promise to his dying mother. Embarking down a parched and dusty road, Juan goes to seek his father, Pedro Páramo, from whom they fled many years ago.
The ruined town of Comala is alive with whispers and shadows. Time shifts
from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of desires and memories, a
world of ghosts dominated by the tyranny of the Páramo family. Womaniser,
overlord and murderer, Juan's notorious father retains an eternal grip over
Comala. Its barren and broken-down streets echo the voices of tormented spirits
sharing the secrets of the past in an extraordinary chorus of sensory images,
violent passions and unfathomable mysteries.’
Pedro
Paramo is a short classical novel from Mexico, written by the writer Juan
Rulfo. I was intrigued by the fact that the foreword of my edition was written
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – which clearly set expectations on what kind of a
novel I could expect.
It
traces the journey of Juan Preciado, who goes to the town of Comala, a
fictional town in Mexico, in search of ‘Pedro Paramo’, who is told to be his
father, by Juan’s mother at her deathbed. He heads to seek his rightful dues
but upon reaching Comala however, he finds that the place is a ghost town and he
is invited by an acquaintance of his mother who begins to tell the story of the
long dead Pedro Paramo – an influential person in the area who owned the ranch
Media Luna, and had fathered several sons with different women, though had
acknowledged only one, Miguel – who created several problems, including having committed
rape and murder. Juan also is scared as he eventually realises that none of the
people are living but he has just been interacting with the spirits.
I
enjoyed the air of mystery around the novel – who is Pedro Paramo and who are
all these people around him? Would Juan get anything out of this journey at
all? Pedro’s own character development was done well – he who was distrusted by
his father as he regarded Pedro to be incompetent, but goes on to be a formidable
figure in the community; also how he is forced into a marriage that he does not
want owing to the debts of his father and is unable to marry Susana, the woman whom
he truly loved. Despite having a large estate, he does not have a successor
whom he could be proud of given the problems that Miguel had caused that he had
to often seek forgiveness from the priest and last, his own influence was being
threatened given Mexico was going through a revolution at that time – where people
rose up against the government who were favouring landlords like Pedro Paramo.
Mystery
aside, despite the relatively short length of the novel, there were over ten
noteworthy characters, each having their space enough to stay in your mind.
This book is not an easy read – you need concentration to absorb the magic realism
around the ghosts, the non-linear narration and even a change of narrator
during the course of the story, but then, I found the narration so interesting
that I finished the whole novel in one sitting over a ninety minute stretch.
Having
not known much of Mexico’s politics, it was interesting to know that the
society was still very feudal in the early 20th century and a landlord
like Pedro Paramo had the power to decide the fate of a whole town if he wished
to; it was also good to see the author allude to these political aspects and
bring those elements into the novel, making it wholesome.
I
have read works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez before and this reminded me a lot of
One Hundred Years of Solitude and based on the foreword, I understand that
Marquez himself got the motivation to write his masterpiece after having moved
to Mexico City and having been introduced to Pedro Paramo and other works of
Juan Rulfo. Thus, my expectations having read that introduction was very high
and this novel certainly met those expectations.
To
conclude, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and it has been a while since I read a
novel with full concentration without having to move or being distracted by
notifications on my phone. This is an excellent novel for those who enjoy the
works of authors like Marquez or Rushdie or anyone who wishes to try novels of
this genre, this is less than 150 pages and thus, it would be quite a short
read and is highly recommended. On that note, I award the book a rating of nine
on ten.
Rating – 9/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
