Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo – Book Review

 

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 20^th 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