A review by book_concierge
The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes

1.0

The novel is framed as the reminiscence of a woman. An old journalist heads to Mexico during the time of the Mexican Revolution seeking, not a story, but his death. He joins with a band of Pancho Villa’s guerilla fighters, led by General Tomas Arroyo, and witnesses events as they destroy all but the mirrored ballroom of a great hacienda. There he encounters a white woman, Harriet Winslow. Harriet had been hired as a governess for the owner’s children, but they had all fled by the time she arrived from the US, and now she is stranded and yet determined to stay and defend the property as best she can.

There has been much praise for this work; it was the first translated work by a Mexican author to become a bestseller in the United States. But I had great difficulty engaging with the characters and the plot, such as it was.

Fuentes interrupts the action with long stream-of-conciousness soliloquies by each of his characters. Some of these consist of one long sentence that takes more than a page of text to get through. Now, I’ve read other works with a similar technique – Jose Saramago’s works come to mind – and I’ve enjoyed them. But in this book, I felt that these interludes did nothing so much as interrupt the meager story and make me like the book even less.

Then there are the sex scenes. I’ll say this for Fuentes, he doesn’t pull any punches. But he also has NO IDEA how women think or what motivates them to act the way they do. These are nothing but a macho man’s fantasy. Enough said.

The Old Gringo in the story is based on Ambrose Bierce, an historical figure who disappeared shortly after he travelled to Mexico during that country’s revolution. But the name is mentioned only once towards the very end of the book.

One final note about the title of the English translation. The originally titled book in Spanish is Gringo Viejo, which does NOT include an article. So the English title should not have that leading “The” either. A small irritation.