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veelaughtland 's review for:
The Transmigration of Bodies
by Yuri Herrera
3.5 stars.
This book was kindly sent to me by the publisher after I requested it for review. All opinions are my own.
This was my first Herrera book, and it certainly won't be my last. In The Transmigration of Bodies, we follow a couple of days in the life of The Redeemer, caught in the middle of two feuding families who each possess a body belonging to the other. His job is to make the trade.
I don't think I have read any hard-boiled crime fiction not set in America, so this look into the Mexican underbelly was a breath of fresh air. This novella is full of sex, language, but surprisingly little violence. What it does feel is incredibly real, and I could feel the threat of disease and the heat of the sun on me as I was reading it. Herrera's prose is compulsively readable, and I thought the translation by Lisa Dillman was done incredibly well.
However, this was just a little too short for me, and there were points where I found myself losing track of what was going on. Despite the plot being fairly simple, I found myself wanting more backstory to the families as it was sometimes difficult remembering how to tell them apart. I wanted to know their history hating each other, how they each got to where they were, and more about the young victims.
Overall though, this was a thoroughly entertaining read, and won't take you long if you're looking to try out some translated fiction.
This book was kindly sent to me by the publisher after I requested it for review. All opinions are my own.
This was my first Herrera book, and it certainly won't be my last. In The Transmigration of Bodies, we follow a couple of days in the life of The Redeemer, caught in the middle of two feuding families who each possess a body belonging to the other. His job is to make the trade.
I don't think I have read any hard-boiled crime fiction not set in America, so this look into the Mexican underbelly was a breath of fresh air. This novella is full of sex, language, but surprisingly little violence. What it does feel is incredibly real, and I could feel the threat of disease and the heat of the sun on me as I was reading it. Herrera's prose is compulsively readable, and I thought the translation by Lisa Dillman was done incredibly well.
However, this was just a little too short for me, and there were points where I found myself losing track of what was going on. Despite the plot being fairly simple, I found myself wanting more backstory to the families as it was sometimes difficult remembering how to tell them apart. I wanted to know their history hating each other, how they each got to where they were, and more about the young victims.
Overall though, this was a thoroughly entertaining read, and won't take you long if you're looking to try out some translated fiction.