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A review by richardwells
Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos
3.0
Why, at 70 pages, this is being called a "novel" rather than a novelette is beyond me. Some kind of literary hyperbole, or a way to sell books, maybe. Anyway, it had gotten raves from the NY Times, and the Guardian, and not having checked its length, I ordered it.
Down the Rabbit Hole is fun in a macabre sort of way. Our hero and narrator is a pampered seven year old, who either has a bad stomach or worse, stomach cancer. He lives in a castle in Mexico surrounded by luxury and is granted his every wish. He's hoping for the arrival of a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus to supplement the evidence eating tiger in his personal zoo. His father is a drug lord, and his playmates are murderers and torturers who do their best to normalize the horrors that occur in the castle.
It's probably an allegory. This child is probably all Mexicans, innocent but jaded, and ill, and coping with a world gone completely haywire but perceived for survival's sake as normal.
sigh
Down the Rabbit Hole is fun in a macabre sort of way. Our hero and narrator is a pampered seven year old, who either has a bad stomach or worse, stomach cancer. He lives in a castle in Mexico surrounded by luxury and is granted his every wish. He's hoping for the arrival of a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus to supplement the evidence eating tiger in his personal zoo. His father is a drug lord, and his playmates are murderers and torturers who do their best to normalize the horrors that occur in the castle.
It's probably an allegory. This child is probably all Mexicans, innocent but jaded, and ill, and coping with a world gone completely haywire but perceived for survival's sake as normal.
sigh