Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo (1955)

Upon his mother's death, a man ventures out to rural Mexico in search of his father and to take his inheritance.

Book Review: Pedro Paramo is a book that doesn't care if its read or not. Read, don't read, the story is there, waiting. Juan Rulfo (1917-1986), born in Jalisco, Mexico, published only three works of fiction: a book of short stories (1953), this short novel, and a later novella (1980). Given the evidence of this book, that's a small tragedy. The whole of the novel seems like an extended Dia de los Muertos. Ghost towns inhabited by ghosts. Wandering souls with no hope of redemption. The dead speak, memories live, the past continues on. Dreams become nightmares, and then are dreams again. Who is alive, who is departed? There's no telling. A quick bit of background: the word paramo translates as desert or wilderness; our protagonist is Juan Preciado, preciado meaning valued. There's much of Mexico here: village life, farms and ranches, priests, revolution, Pancho Villa. Abandoned towns. Though filled with spirits, there is also much of the flesh here, body heat, sin, fevered desire. Gabriel Garcia Marquez must've read Pedro Paramo. Throughout the book there are glimpses of Garcia Marquez around every corner, and he could've written the final 10 or 20 pages. Rulfo must have been an influence on the Nobel Prize winner. What this short book does not have is narrative drive, a compelling mystery, a plot, a push to keep reading. Pedro Paramo (well translated here by American poet Lysander Kemp) is too dreamlike, misty, too insubstantial for that. You enter the ghost world and stay there at your choice. But you'll want to stay, and wish you could stay longer.  [4★]