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Tyrant Memory (2011)

by Horacio Castellanos Moya(Favorite Author)

3.54 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0811219178 (ISBN13: 9780811219174)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

New Directions

review 1: horacio castellanos moya here presents a novel of historical fiction centered around a failed coup d'etat in 1944 el salvador. the work balances between the diary of a woman, haydee, who worries about her husband who is a political prisoner and who becomes an unlikely activist, and the story of her son, who is a fugitive from the military after taking part in the failed coup. this book is, um, ok. the diary is compelling as it presents a cultural context that provides an international point of relation: we are all worried mothers, worried wives. we are not political activists storming the barricades. we are the ones who hide in the house and worry about the ones storming the barricades, until out of neccessity (and historically speaking this necessity always arrives) it IS... more us storming the barricades. this is moving until it comes to the conclusion that we sort of knew it would all along, and then it just stops. equally compelling but MUCH more clumsily written is the all-unattributed-dialog section, in which haydee's son clemen and a member of the resistance hide in an attic, in a cabin, in a boat. they often describe things as they would never describe in real life, because they would obviously be experiencing it, e.g. "Oh no! The boat is capsizing!" - this clumsiness is so frequent that it's offputting. All this is capped by a third section, thirty years later, about the death of the novel's patriarch symbolizing exactly what, I'm not sure. after the coup comes to a halt, we're given another forty pages of this dead weight. bummer.
review 2: I chose to read this book in order to learn about the culture of El Salvador since I will be going on a mission trip there this summer. I enjoyed reading the book and learning the history and culture, but felt that it left many gaps as to what happened to many of the characters after the strike. It is touched on briefly, but I would have liked to have known more of their story. Another chapter on Clemente and Jimmy's return to society would have been helpful. less

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