Courtesy: Harish. CBC.
...in Cocuán, where we live so close to empty space and its dark matter that the sun is like a father, it bakes your brains or gnaws away at you, far, very far from the sheltering womb of the earth.
A hypnotic Latin American novel about the strange happenings in a town forgotten by the world.
On the day young Mildred loses her mother, her father leaves home. Soon the people of the Andean town Cocuán, where she lives, grab all her belongings and finally her life, unaware that she will live on as a legend to eventually unleash a carnival of atrocities on them. Years later, when the town confronts the mysterious mass disappearance of many occupants, they decide to band together and search for them in the forest. In this journey they are forced to confront their innermost evils from the past, which will soon catch up with them in violent and delirious ways.
'A Carnival of Atrocities' is the latest Latin American novel to be translated into English. Written by the Ecuadorian novelist Natalia García Freire and translated from Spanish to English by Victor Meadowcroft, it is a powerful exploration of the nature of memories, justice, religion, and collective guilt. The novel is set in a fictional town of Cocuán, which lies in the Ecuadorian Andes and is a desolate place where the borderline between dream and reality seems to be too narrow. I received a review copy of the book from its publisher, World Editions, through NetGalley, in exchange for my honest feedback.
The novel is unveiled from multiple perspectives of its characters, where each person narrates a different chapter. The book opens with the narration of Mildred beginning from the day her mother died. While her fate is not explicitly revealed in it, we encounter it progressively in the subsequent chapters in which different characters are on a cursed journey to find the missing people of the town. The most unique and striking feature of the novel is the distinct styles in which different characters narrate their individual stories. The translator deserves appreciation for bringing out the finer points of this characteristic of the narration in the English version.
In the translation, we find that many Spanish nouns are used as they are. Some of them are very specific and important in the narrative, while a few are mostly terms that come up very frequently in common talk. This aspect helps to root the plot in its setting and to create a feeling of authenticity to the narration. The translator has gone to extra lengths to preserve the vision of the writer and the lyrical beauty of her harsh but evocative writing. I saw that the previous book of the author translated by the same person into English has won recognitions, and I hope this one also gets the acclaim that it rightfully deserves.
Along with the human characters of the plot, we find that nonhuman and even inanimate elements are elevated as proper characters in the story. One example is Cocuán, the town where the story is set. While reading, we get a notion that these events happen only because of the town, and it is introduced as an important element of the plot with enough historical and cultural context. Another important nonhuman character is the forest that surrounds the town. The forest is introduced as the perfect contrast to the ugly town, as an abode of natural vitality and mystery. It's interesting to observe that in between the town and the forest there is a place that is an artificial forest planted by the townspeople, which serves as a border between where the two extremes meet.
There is a priest in the story who takes charge after the previous one, who is the prime reason for Mildred's misfortune, goes insane. This priest also serves as a buffer, just like the artificial forest. There is the formal church on one extreme and the primeval beliefs that the people of the town try to retain on the other. The priest tries to find a compromise between the two but, just like the eventual destiny of the man-made town, has to succumb to the more powerful one. The tepid wind that blew when Mildred was born makes its presence felt for the entire length of the novel, and along with the dry Indian summer, it creates the unease and mystery that's transferred into the readers also.
'A Carnival of Atrocities' is a work of hypnotic poetic beauty, though very sharp and violent, traversing a fragile line between myth and reality. It evokes the style of folklores and fables and explores the corrosive nature of collective guilt, which can swallow a society whole. The desolation and corruption of Cocuán and the mass delirium the characters suffer also serve as a metaphor about the systemic injustices meted out to the weaker sections of society and how they have the potential to collectively strike back, eventually decimating that rotten core.
