A review by watchingpreacher
The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes

3.0

Rough start on this, but I enjoyed it more and more as it went along. The themes (death, fathers and sons, the souls of Mexico and America) and characters were interesting, but Fuentes' prose was not my cup of tea at all. At times it came off as hilariously melodramatic, other times incredibly confusing, a bit of it tipping over from poetic to pretentious (and I usually try to stay away from that word). Still, the thematic substance is interesting, and the latter half (especially the last fifty pages) held my attention.

I wouldn't recommend it though, and if it hadn't been a part of my Magical Realism-course, I would not have finished it.