Mario Vargas Llosa, The War of the End of the World (1981)

So the War of Canudos was an incident in Brazil the 1890s. The emperor had recently been deposed and a Republic installed; this did not sit well with a lot of people, and this guy started an eschatological religious movement which started a village in the north called Canudos. The government was not happy about this and there were a series of bloody skirmishes the upshot of which--naturally--was that the village was wiped out and almost everyone killed. Whee.

That's what this novel is about--a fictionalized account of that war. Broadly speaking, it's about the emergence of modernity in all its confusion and contradiction, and violence. You can't really pinpoint a protagonist or protagonist; there are dozens and dozens of viewpoint characters. There are, especially in the first half, a lot of digressive narratives about where the devotees of "the Counselor" come from, along with the expected politicking and violence. Lots o' violence. The novel is more about the whole than any individual. That said, I think most people would probably point to the character of Galileo Gall: a Scottish anarchist who has ended up in Brazil--very much a "no gods, no masters" type. He has nothing but contempt for religion, but he still sees something special in Canudos, its communcal living without hierarchies.

It's kind of weird that it took me this long to get to Vargas Llosa (1936 -), really. He's certainly one of the most significant Latin American writers, even if--in the Anglosphere, at any rate--he doesn't have quite the cachet of Garcia Marquez or Cortazar. Also, if nothing else, he was (is, actually--he's still writing in his eighties) a lot more prolific than either of those guys, with a lot of books that are considered significant. It wasn't clear where I should start; I chose this one somewhat arbitrarily because I read that it's his favorite of his own books--and also, not incidentally, because, at almost eight hundred pages in English translation, it's his longest novel. Whatevs!

So. I was absolutely and utterly enthralled and captivated by the first half of this book and was all ready to declare it Book. Of. The. Year. But...dammit, I hate to say it, but I can't help but feel that it somewhat loses momentum in the back half. Gall ceases to be involved--his narrative feeling kind of prematurely cut short, to be honest--and I can't help but feel that the ideological themes get lost, somewhat. Unless the theme is meant to be that there's no difference between the government armies and the Canudos people (neither of them are notably admirable), which I wouldn't find terribly interesting. But there is just A LOT of fighting in the second half, and to me, it really did become a bit of a slog. There is, sort of, a group of sympathetic characters, a journalist who went along with the Republican army and some others, but their narrative is pretty understated, and like much else here, there's never that much done with it. Also, COME ON, someone explain to me what the HELL the deal is with the scene where the Baron de Canabrava rapes his mentally ill wife's maidservant. That was just baffling to me.

It feels kind of weird to give a book like this three-ish stars, implying that it's kind of mediocre or just-okay. This novel is most certainly not mediocre. It reaches high, even if that reach sometimes exceeds its grasp. Flawed work of genius, is what I'd call it. I'm definitely going to read more of Vargas Llosa; I feel like he's important enough that reading one of his novels is not enough, in an exploration of Latin American literature. It's gonna take reading at least three or four, and I am not at all reluctant to do so. I may read his books in between other writers, but I will. Bank on it.