Customer Reviews

In Evil Hour

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The initial reaction to reading this short novel is that the author forgot to finish it. The book has a plot and the reader gets drawn into it but the story seems to end ahead of the anticipated conclusion. The reader is left wanting answers and may go away disappointed. However, I believe Garcia Marquez only meant to give us a snapshot in the life of a community in turmoil. I believe he meant for us to be left in the dark. Perhaps he wanted to give an impression of a world where there is always conflict without resolution.

This is a well-written book with an interesting cast of characters. It is, nonetheless, a snapshot; not the whole roll of film.

"In Evil Hour" is one of the early novels written by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Published in 1962, it was previous to his "A Hundred Years of Solitude" and "The Autumn of the Patriarch", some of his most famous novels and that consolidated his style. Considering that, one can say that this novel is really good. It is not as fine tuned as his best works, there is no Magical Realism in here -- actually, the book is quite realist -- but it is such an engaging and well conceived story that it is impossible to stop reading.

The narrative is set in a small town ruled by a peculiar mayor. He fills the role of both mayor and deputy -- in other words, he is the law in that place. The citizens having been facing a small problem. Every morning someone finds in his, her door a bulleting anonymously written telling a gossip about him, her or the family. The strange thing is that the fact stated in the piece of paper is known by everyone, despite people not talking about it. So what is making the citizens tense is not what will be said but who is saying those things.

Solving this mystery is a job to the nameless mayor, but he is not very interested in it. To his knowledge this kind of gossip will stop sooner or later. He has a very interesting role in the book, since he is such a dubious character. As the reading progress, one can notice that he can't be simply described as good or evil. It is much more complex than that. So are townspeople. Márquez make them appealing folks with very interesting background stories to keep the pages moving.

"In Evil Hour" deals with politics, but in a very subtle way. Hints are given here and there about the recent changes the town has faced. The past seems to have been obscure, but we are never certain of that. Márques exploit heavy subjects that darken Latin American History with grace and seriousness and his peculiar sense of humor. And in the end we seem to have spent some time in that village, and however much we may have enjoyed it, we may not be willing to come back to that place -- although one may want to reread this book one of these days.

In Evil Hour hasn't enjoyed the respect it should, as a contemporary masterpiece, at least on par with Love in the Time of Cholera.

Readers who cite a lack of plot have not fully explored this book. The reality of this novel is that all of the messages, most of the plot, and a good part of the action are implied, rather than explicitly stated. If one were available, I would recommend picking up a Cliff's Notes or Sparknotes for this book, due to the confusing structure and dense, recondite prose; none of the editions I have read so far has included an introduction or explanation of the book more thorough than what is written on the dust jacket.

Ultimately, If you're looking for some good, light, poolside reading, skip In Evil Hour - this is not that sort of book, and you will be left confused and unsatisfied with the book. However, if you are prepared to read it twice, carefully, in order to understand the subtexts and allusions, this book will enchant you and become a favorite.

"In Evil Hour" is a swift portrait of a Colombian town that connects the awful force of oppressive regimes to the bald paranoia of a town feeding itself rumor after rumor about its own citizens. The themes are there, but might seem obtuse upon your first reading. Still, the book pretty clearly says that tyranny leads to an abandonment of sense and a mean discontent, a desire to assert yourself by shaming the powerful when you have no democratic outlet for expression. This is a novel of the quietly disenfranchised and supposedly pious succumbing to the base desires of an evil hour.

The salilent point in grasping it all comes when you realize a lot of essential action is implied. Marquez has called Faulkner his "master" and here, while Marquez is still developing his own voice, he borrows heavily on Faulkner's style of orcing the reader to infer basic plot action. For example, Trinidad is arguably a lampooner. She's the one who first mentions them and she mysteriously falls sick when the curfew is set. Note thhe relationship betwen joyfully killing mice and her taking glee in the misfortunate of the lampoons. She's abused and belongs to a clergy robbed of real holiness and indepedence from the state; it's no small wonder she's vicious ... or that her replacement, Marquez implies, has placed more lampoons as the story concludes.

Another chief feature of Evil Hour is that it has no moral protaganist. The mayor is a government bully: his character is a wry, generous picture of a bored, opportunistic tyrannical hoodlum -- and the judge? The judge is lazy and corrupt beyond measure.

The priest is the most sympathetic main figure because he is devout and fatalistic at once. He lives his days in a sullen guilt at placing his church at the mercy of the state and offering people a brittle faith in the face of brutal dictatorship.

It's worth noting, biographically, that Marquez's bittersweet attitude toward tyranny comes from a correspondence and relationship with Castro.

Let me just put it this way: I am glad that "In Evil Hour" is not the first Garcia-Marquez novel I had read, or I might not have picked another one up. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera" are absolute masterpieces. I suppose that "In Evil Hour" was just practice for the young Garcia-Marquez...I believe this was his first novel, and all great artists have to start somewhere.

Basically, this is a story of a South American town that is being undone by the posting of 'lampoons'. Martial law is declared, a fact that surprises exactly no one, as they have lived under tyranny and the empty promises of democrats their entire lives. It is a simple treatise on South American politics, and as such does manage to stand on its own, but it hardly seems that unique to me. Perhaps it was on the date of its original publication, circa 1960.

The cast of characters is too large to keep up with, and really none of the characters are even overly interesting. While the reviewers on the back of this book called it "dream-like", I would prefer vague and nondescript. From about page ten, the only thing I wanted to do was to not read this book anymore. I did manage to finish, but only becuase it's an extremely short book.

I give this book 2 stars, because we meet the fictional village of Macondo and Colonel Aureliano (literary legends made famous in "One Hundred Years of Solitude") for the first time. And also because, hey, it is after all Gabriel Garcia-Marquez I'm reviewing here.

This book is quite difficult for me to rate, because it didn't really follow the conventional plot structure of most other books I've read. There are so many interesting things going on but they all seem unconnected. For example, Marquez begins describing the events surrounding a group of people, and when you are just beginning to understand what is happening to them, he whisks you away to someone somewhere else and while trying to work out the link between this and the first group, he sends you to a third

Another thing about this book is that it assumes you have some knowledge of the events that happened in South America, (even if this is a mythical town) which means that some things might not make sense to you if you didn't happen to grow up there. I was wondering why the dentist was hated by the mayor (apparently he was involved in some subversive activity), and what the significance of Los pasquines were. There were also some unresolved issues in the novel, like did Trinidad's parents eventually find out about her abusive uncle? What happened to the mayor? and what about the `missing' boy?

It was this incompleteness that ruined what was otherwise an excellent book for me. The moral of the story, you should know some background information before you begin In Evil hour. Unfortunately my copy of the book did not have any introductory notes. It's a good story, and I'd recommend it, but like I said, it might be confusing for those not from South America.

This short novel is a good but not great. I found it difficult to get into in spite of it's brevity. The book captures the imagination but on a limited scope as the plot is a little convoluted to say the least. I found myself along the way wondering where the story was going as GGM meandered along revealing bits and pieces of his vision of a small town caught up in the grips of the harsh political climate in Colombia. I didn't think any one character was dominant enough nor for that matter were any in particular shown to have much depth. Coming from the Latin American literary giant GGM I was a bit dissappointed. I suppose the characters were not as important as the overall sense of fear cast by an oppresive government which is in search of dissidents while the mice that are menacing the church scurry about at night as the people do likewise under a curfew. The ominous tension created by GGM is the reality that many have to live under in Latini America and the author shows the depth of that fear resides not only in big cities but in small towns as well. Persecution exists in every level of society and GGM shows that even in a sleepy, pictureque little town near the river the serenity of nature can be disrupted by evil. Recommended for those that like GGM and a glimpse at a precursor to "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

We are dropped into a hot South American town and are immediately introduced to a number of characters: the priest, the judge, the mayor and a man who, for no apparent reason, leaves his house and shoots a neighbour. It would appear that he has done this because somebody has been putting up scurrilous messages around the village - referred to as "lampoons", and his wife was targeted.

Despite the shooting we are lulled into a false sense that this is just another sleepy old one-horse town where nothing much goes on. But this is far from the truth and Marquez slowly and gently reveals the darker underside.

However, what at first seemed like an easy and enjoyable book became, for me, a perplexing and difficult reading experience. Throughout the book the writer drops a hint of something into the narrative, which left me scratching my head as to its meaning. I found this very disconcerting. The explanation is found later - usually two pages on, but it still left a sense of unease. I was never sure what was going on. As the book progresses the true picture starts to develop and the hints start to take some form and shape: this is a village that has undergone political oppression and murder, and the characters that at first seem so benign, have a darker and more complicated story.

There is condemnation of certain people and it seems no is spared - for example one wonders at the role of the priest in all of this murderous turmoil - and at one stage reference is made to him hearing the cockrel crowing - a direct reference to Peter betraying Jesus. How can a man of God have accepted the evil hour? In similar vein the Mayor is at first betrayed as a languid and lazy individual who strolls around the town chatting to folks - but the truth about him is gradually revealed; so too the dentist and the barber; all comes out and the spotlight shines on them all.

Marquez is a good writer, but his style takes some getting used to - he hides the story behind his narrative, and only gently reveals what is truly going on. This can be a little frustrating and some of the undertone of the book can be lost.I did get a great sense of place from this book and the characters very much come alive, however what this book needs is a second read - so that its richness can be fully enjoyed.

(***1/2) In Evil Hour is one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's earliest works, through virtues of wit and compassion, the rich and dreamy portrait of a mythical town, in one way or another the book preludes to the most successful One Hundred Years of Solitude. In this short novel, incendiary lampoons infested a Columbian riverside town and traduced its most respected citizens. It began as Cesar Montero marched into the house of Pastor and gunned down its master after reading a crumpled note revealing secret of an affair. What followed was an ineluctable transformation of the town that deceit, murder, inveigle, and violence replaced the inveterate tranquility.

The tooth pain-afflicted mayor, the doctor, and Father Angel joined in a cooperative effort to identify and locate the lampoon posters while the town strenuously clung onto the last spindle of sanity. Curfew was enforced and any suspected personnel was jailed for alleged lampoon spreading. A list of all residents who had not had lampoons put up on whom was compiled. Authorities turned to card reading to divine the origin of the traduces. The entire tale is inexorably redolent of a quiet, throbbing paranoia as the result of the lampoons, which haunted and rendered everyone insomniac.

The book, though not as flourishing as its successor (One Hundred Years of Solitude), riddles with life trivialities, constant desires for confession and absolution, and ominous signs in the minute episodes that shape daily life. Though somewhat slow-moving and trite at parts, In Evil Hour has the virtues of wit and reveals the foundation upon which the author based in his later novels - vision of some mythical small town being haunted by bits and pieces and waves of political upheaval. Characters are mere instruments and vehicles with which Marquez wrote against government oppression.

2004 (26) © MY

`In Evil Hour' is G.G. Márquez's version of the French `film noir' `Le Corbeau' shot by Henri-Georges Clouzot, where a person terrorizes a village with lampoons out of sexual jealousy.
`In Evil Hour', however, centers on more important subjects: social justice and politics.
`The sanctity of the ballot' has been desecrated by a `ruler by the gun': `a fine business: my party gets in power, the police threaten my political opponents with death, and I buy their land and livestock at prices I set myself.'
The lampoons are `a symptom of social decomposition'. They are `a case of terrorism in the moral order', because `death is feeding on this town.'
A final confrontation puts the mayor-ruler and his thugs against the majority of the population. If no other solution is possible, `justice depends on bullets'.

With its brilliant images (`He felt like an ox with a ring in his nose, being led to the poolroom'), its magical creation of a menacing atmosphere, its mix of hidden alliances and innocent (until the masks fall) bystanders (the judge and the priest), Gabriel García Márquez wrote a formidable masterpiece.

A must read for all lovers of world literature.