Word: donoso
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY by José Donoso; Knopf; 352 pages...
With The Obscene Bird of Night (1973), his fourth book, Chilean Author José Donoso joined the front ranks of South American fabulists. His sprawling novel not only housed more grotesques than a whole rack of Gothic thrillers; it also offered a narrator who pretended to be a deaf-mute, baroque retellings of native legends and a riot of inventiveness. Donoso was inevitably mentioned in the same breath with Borges and Marquez as yet another prophetic surrealist bent on reimagining his colorful, tragic continent...
...House in the Country proves, first of all, that success has not made Donoso cautious. His new novel takes major risks. It does without a strong central character around whom the action can revolve. It offers instead the Ventura family: seven adults and their spouses plus 33 children ranging in age from six to 16. This clan spends every summer at Marulanda, a magnificent, fenced-in estate, with a vast plain outside stretching to the horizon in all directions. Barely visible are the blue mountains beyond, where laborers who are virtual slaves mine the Ventura gold...
Suspicions that the Venturas are meant to stand, in exaggerated poses, for some of the more garish South American oligarchies are inescapable, and Donoso does nothing to discourage them. But he also ducks any implied accusations of realism. After setting and populating his scene in the first chapter, the author takes pains to point out that his creations are impalpable figures of fancy. He asks his readers to "accept what I write as an artifice. By intruding myself from time to time on the story I simply wish to remind the reader of his distance from the material of this...
Sacred Families, José Donoso...