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ale101010's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
hollydunndesign's review against another edition
4.0
Written from the point of view of a child called Tochtli, this is not your usual novel with a child protagonist. Tochtli’s father is the leader of a powerful gang and he lives in a secluded mansion in excessive wealth fueled by drugs. Both darkly disturbing and unsettlingly funny, this is about a pampered but isolated child’s quest to be ‘macho’ and to own a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus.
shanviolinlove's review against another edition
5.0
This is my third romp with Villalobos and the slim book that put his name on bookshelves; despite his reputation as a humorous writer, I never really did more than smile at some of his other works, as they were aimed more at satire than humor. Indeed, Down the Rabbit Hole is potent with incisive critiques, but I couldn't help laughing at the sharp dialogue, Tochtli's unabashed honesty that was simultaneously shrewd and ignorant, childishly selfish and childishly innocent.
Like many books that employ a child narrator to juxtapose against a very adult situation (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon, among others), this book was jarring in the unfiltered violence common among drug lords and witnessed (albeit peripherally) by the drug baron's precocious son. He houses many eccentric hobbies and collections in the obscenely ornate mansion that he and his single father occupy. His desires, however outlandish (to add a Nigerian pygmy hippopotamus to his backyard exotic zoo), are also sweetly heartfelt. The closest he has to a friend is his teacher, but the unquestioned list of lavish purchases distracts him enough from realizing the cost of his father's life--an extravagant world of isolation. I said I laughed many times while reading this novel, but it is ultimately a sad story, even if the narrator himself does not realize this.
Like many books that employ a child narrator to juxtapose against a very adult situation (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon, among others), this book was jarring in the unfiltered violence common among drug lords and witnessed (albeit peripherally) by the drug baron's precocious son. He houses many eccentric hobbies and collections in the obscenely ornate mansion that he and his single father occupy. His desires, however outlandish (to add a Nigerian pygmy hippopotamus to his backyard exotic zoo), are also sweetly heartfelt. The closest he has to a friend is his teacher, but the unquestioned list of lavish purchases distracts him enough from realizing the cost of his father's life--an extravagant world of isolation. I said I laughed many times while reading this novel, but it is ultimately a sad story, even if the narrator himself does not realize this.
burritapal_1's review against another edition
dark
funny
informative
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
The protagonist, the kid Tochtli, has an interesting outlook on life. He's a motherless boy; we don't know what happened to his mother.
He knows only a few people, being that he's isolated in his drug lord father's palace. He's one day musing that if he counted dead people, he would know quite a few more people. He's seen his father make several people into corpses.
Here he is musing to himself about making Corpses:
".. another way of making corpses is by cutting, which you can also do with knives or with machetes and guillotines. You can make little Cuts or big ones. If they're big they separate the body parts and make corpses in little pieces. The most normal thing to do is cut off the head, although, actually, you can cut anything. It's because of the neck. If we didn't have a neck it would be different. It might be normal to cut bodies in half down the middle so as to have two corpses. But we have a neck and this is a really big temptation. Especially for French people."
This child is precocious; he likes to read the dictionary. He has these favorite words, and one of them is "pathetic." He increasingly uses this word to describe people or situations.
Yolcalt, the protagonist's father/drug dealer, has a private zoo at his palace. It has a lion and a couple of tigers, and Tochtli wants a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia to add to his zoo.
He likes to watch the news, and on this day he hears that the head zookeeper of the Guadalajara zoo was eaten by the tigers.
"At the end of the report the man on the news looked very sad and said he hoped the head zookeeper would rest in peace. How stupid. She was already chewed up inside the Tigers' tummies. And she's only going to stay there while the Tigers digest her, because she'll end up being turned into tiger poo. Rest in peace, like hell. At the most her left leg will rest in peace."
LOL
Tochtli often has pain in his tummy, and a doctor that Yolcalt brought to the Palace said that the reason he has pain in his tummy is because he has no mother. When he can't bear the pain anymore, the cook Cinteotl makes him a cup of chamomile tea.
"Cinteotl has a drawer full of herbs for curing illnesses. She's got chamomile for the stomach, Linden flowers for nerves, orange leaves for dieting, passionflower for nerves, Orange Blossom for digestion, Valerian for nerves, and a load of other herbs, lots of them for nerves. Yolcalt doesn't like tea, he says it's a coward's drink."
When I was in high school and we had to take 2 years of "foreign" language, I took French. I flunked it though, because I refused to make that noise in my throat that sounds like you're gagging. So this observation by Tochtli about the French airplane hostesses made me laugh:
"in the plane from Paris, Franklin Gómez spoke French to the French servant girls. And spent the whole journey drinking the French people's champagne. Winston López told him to take advantage of being in first class, which isn't for people dying of hunger like him. The French servant girls on the plane said their r's really strangely, as if they had a sore throat or the r was stuck in it. Pathetic. Maybe the French have sore throats because of cutting off their King's heads."
The reason why Tochtli and Yolcalt and the tutor are on a plane from Paris to Liberia is because his father actually goes to the trouble of getting false passports from Honduras that give them fake names, so they can go to hunt for a pygmy hippopotamus. A Hunter guide is hired and they spend several days in a Jeep, going through the jungle looking for a pygmy hippopotamus. They finally do manage to find a female and male pair, and the hunter shoots them with a sleep medication. They are then caged for the trip back to Mexico, but within a week they're dead. Yolcalt then has the heads cut off and mounted on boards so that Tochtli can put them up in his room.
I'm not going to lie; this was a downer for me. Whatever, it's just a story, right? And drug lords can probably try to make their son feel better for their lousy Life by giving them what they asked for.
Dark humor that works fairly well for this writer, and it's his first book. Many of the things in the book made me laugh, but as a reviewer for the guardian said, it's laughter that often dies on our lips.
gaelmontiel's review against another edition
4.0
Lo maravilloso del tratamiento del narcotráfico en esta novela es que no hay manera de predecir el tema hasta bien entrado un tercio del libro. Narrado desde el punto de vista del hijo de un narco, "Fiesta en la madriguera" ofrece una narración cuasi-fantástica: en el mundo habitado por Tochtli (conejo en náhuatl) hay palacios, reyes y tigres, pero también diputados corruptos, cadáveres y cuernos de chivo. Villalobos juega mucho con los simbolismos animales, lo que añade a la atmósfera fabulesca (a Tochtli le encantan los sombreros, y en algún momento confiesa que tiene las orejas demasiado grandes).
Algunos pasajes me recordaron a "Trabajos del Reino" de Yuri Herrera, especialmente por llamarle "Rey" al narco principal, además de la construcción mítica de la guarida del narcotraficante: el Castillo en "Trabajos...", aquí, el Palacio (la Madriguera). Al igual que la de Herrera, es una primera novela breve, brutal y prometedora. Cuando la razón del título se revela en la última línea del libro, cae como balde de agua fría.
Algunos pasajes me recordaron a "Trabajos del Reino" de Yuri Herrera, especialmente por llamarle "Rey" al narco principal, además de la construcción mítica de la guarida del narcotraficante: el Castillo en "Trabajos...", aquí, el Palacio (la Madriguera). Al igual que la de Herrera, es una primera novela breve, brutal y prometedora. Cuando la razón del título se revela en la última línea del libro, cae como balde de agua fría.
raskoulnikov's review against another edition
4.25
“Begitulah yang Yolcaut bilang, bahwa orang-orang berpendidikan tahu banyak soal buku tapi tidak tahu sama sekali soal kehidupan.”
Finally had a chance to read it in one sit when I was supposed to do it about two weeks ago right after I finished Gagal Menjadi Manusia.
Written by Juan Pablo Villalobos, Pesta di Sarang Kelinci might be the first North American literature I’ve ever read and I think I’ll read more. This is that one novella which the number of the dialogues can be easily counted yet each sentence is perfectly conveyed.
I’m not very sure how to describe why I love this novella but there’s something in the way Juan Pablo Villalobos wrote about violence, gangland warfare, and drugs from the perspective of a seven year old little boy that got me mezmerized and horrified at the exact same time. The sardonic humor was pitch-perfect and Tochtli is absolutely not your average child protagonist. In other words, this novella is so good even in the translation version. And, oh, Villalobos also has a creative naming for each characters.