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A review by octavia_cade
November: A Novel by Jorge Galán
dark
sad
medium-paced
4.0
I have to admit, I knew absolutely nothing about the history of El Salvador before I picked up this particular novel, and that ignorance largely remains. That's not the fault of this very interesting book, however, which is inspired by one particular event in the Salvadoran Civil War: the 1989 assassination of six Jesuit priests and a mother and daughter who work for them by the Salvadoran army. There's the usual attempt at cover-up that you would expect from something like this, and very little justice, which is depressing. Most of the official wrap-up is in the last section of the book which, though well-researched, is honestly less interesting than the rest of it.
Part of that interest lies in the structure. Divided into parts, each section of November focuses on a single individual and how they respond to the killings. Sometimes the individual is quite closely related, and other times it's a more distant interaction, but the whole combine to give a really effective narrative. It's a clumsy analogy, but if each part is a snapshot, then the stack of those snapshots, joined together, give an almost 360 degree panorama of response. I found it an appealing way to tell a story, despite the grim and frustrating subject matter.
It is, however, necessarily limited. Because the focus is so strongly on these murders, I finished the book with no real context for the Civil War itself... frankly I learned more about that from Wikipedia than I did November. I don't say that as a criticism, though. It's more a neutral observation. It's clear that Galán has not set out to write a sprawling history; his purpose is more precise than that. No doubt if I were more familiar with the history of El Salvador I would see links and references that have just passed me by, but even so: cultural histories, whether fictional or not, benefit from a variety of approaches, and the microscopic has as much value as the macroscopic, I think.
Part of that interest lies in the structure. Divided into parts, each section of November focuses on a single individual and how they respond to the killings. Sometimes the individual is quite closely related, and other times it's a more distant interaction, but the whole combine to give a really effective narrative. It's a clumsy analogy, but if each part is a snapshot, then the stack of those snapshots, joined together, give an almost 360 degree panorama of response. I found it an appealing way to tell a story, despite the grim and frustrating subject matter.
It is, however, necessarily limited. Because the focus is so strongly on these murders, I finished the book with no real context for the Civil War itself... frankly I learned more about that from Wikipedia than I did November. I don't say that as a criticism, though. It's more a neutral observation. It's clear that Galán has not set out to write a sprawling history; his purpose is more precise than that. No doubt if I were more familiar with the history of El Salvador I would see links and references that have just passed me by, but even so: cultural histories, whether fictional or not, benefit from a variety of approaches, and the microscopic has as much value as the macroscopic, I think.