Customer Reviews

The Obscene Bird of Night (Verba Mundi)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The mutations of characters, the non-linear style in which this story is told, the repetitions, shifts in perspective add to make this work a remarkable book. Without a doubt not only one of the finest magical realist works I've ever stumbled upon, but one of the finest novels I have ever read.
As the work has multiple foundations, one of the major ones about Humberto Penaloza, who as a child & adolescent was always told by his father that he must become something, it doesn't matter what, as long as Humberto doesn't go through the same social obscurity that he endures. Later on, he becomes the assistant to Jeronimo, a wealthy politician who is trying to lengthen the family tree. His wife, Ines de Azcoitia is unable to bear him children. Then through either an act of black magic, or Humberto's intimacy Jeronimo is given his child. The child, simply called Boy, is horribly deformed. Jeronimo decides to build the child it's own world, entirely secluded from anything outside of it and surrounded by other people with monstrosities. Humberto is put in charge, and becomes the abnormal one in this newly formed world where deformities is not the exception but the rule. Humberto's abnormality is his plain everyman look, social obscurity. He ends his days in a former catholic church, now peopled by elderly women, either nuns or former servants waiting to die.
This book works on so many different levels & they're always communicating to one another, effortlessly the past becomes the present, it is a hallucinatory poetic parade of the grotesque and the beautfiul, of the grotesque as the beautiful. It is also a commentary on domination in its many forms- husband & wife, father & son, the elderly & the young, master & servant. Sometimes the dominant position is usurped & the roles are reversed.
It's no wonder that both Carlos Fuentes & Luis Bunuel considered it to be a masterpiece.

I would not know where to begin to try to summarize this book. There are several story arcs, and several narrative voices which are actually all one voice-- different guises of Humberto Peñaloza. He is an unborn fetus (miracle baby), a frustrated nun, an improbable mute, and the secretary to a rich man who may or may not have fathered the rich man's deformed baby.

The Obscene Bird of Night is justly considered one of the best books in Chilean literature. Richly and skilfully written, its myth and metaphor wraps around itself to be moving, horrifying, mystifying and satisfying.

This is a book that needs some time. It is very far from an easy read. If I have not given it five stars, it is not a comment on the genius of the book. Rather, it is simply that it is more grotesque than I really have the stomach to enjoy in an unqualified way. I admire it immensely, and recommend it unhesitatingly.

This book is a true masterpiece into hallucinatory writing. Donoso captures the essence of classical latin american magical realism while flickering between narratives and schizophrenia. A truely touching novel, full of life, imagery, love and disgust. A masterpiece.

This novel is the most weird and fantastical novel I have ever read. This, of course, means it is one of the best. The plot is surreal, the words are deep and rich, and it is so original, so beautiful and so brave, that any reader if affected by it.
When reading, you are plunged into such a different world that the images created encase you, lock you into the plot.
This novel, is a step into the mist for anyone who has only stuck to the odd thriller. It is a opening to wider horizons - that of magic realism.

I will make this short and I'm not going to summarize the book. This was a wonderful book to read. The imagery is fantastic. The writing and depth of story is awesome. This book isn't for the for the meek.

If Latin America is known for "magical realism" and it is, although that is perhaps a myth along the lines of international boundaries, then this is the nightmare version. Its like the movie Eraserhead if you've seen that, or Naked Lunch or 2001: A Space Odyssey. You're given cool images and happenings and they don't need to always mean anything or be real; here there are layers of the same events; told over and over, a girl, a witch, a witch and a girl, which is she? Both, neither, who knows. Its troubled, its dark, its twisted, its twisting, its disorienting, its sometimes too much- urine for 2 straight pages is a little too descriptive, its also very unique and its a tangle that's worth the trouble. The book is as mangled as Boy, and don't try to cling to one version as reality, let them all be, take them all in, its a ride, like a roller coaster. It can be fun, scary, and nauseating, if you let it, or it can be painful, scary, and nauseating, if you want.

Point of fact: It is not humanly possible to figure out what exactly is happening in the Obscene Bird of Night (OBN). This may very well be the leitmotif of magical realism, but here, we have a splintering of human reality so profound that the whole piece fractures into miniscule shards which are propelled disparately away from the epi centre in furious motion, so when the dust settles, there is simply nothing tangible left to commemorate the premise.

The skeleton of OBN is framed by the multiple narrative of ostensibly one character, Humberto, who morphs continuously into a (eunuch?)deaf-mute, a newborn baby, and finally, into an Imbunche. The narrative modes vacillate between `You', `I', `He' and `We', and it can't be ascertained if any of the different manifestations of the same character are real or a figment of his imagination. The collapse of reality is woven together through the ideological model of Chilean imbunche myth and anchored, if that concept even exists, via the Casa de ejercisios espirituales which, with its labyrinthine, impregnable passages, informs the actual formation of characters. (a well known, well tested ploy: think Egdon heath in Hardy's `Return of the Native', as well as many more examples).

The question, then, is OBN likeable? Too often I felt emotionally detached from the unfolding surrealistic vignettes. On a clinical level, I've traversed enough through the annals of literature to grasp the main thrust of OBN: Yes, the collapse of external reality, the denouncement of a fractured society, the purported destruction of consciousness, and the multiple perspectives of the same reality.
The easiest trap to fall into here, is to obsess about the overtly prevalent theme of self-destruction, which on reflection, I don't believe underpins the novel at all. True, Ariel Dorman posits that the auto destruction of Donoso's character(s) is the result of their untenable position in Latin America, a region identified through prolonged violence, where desperation forces people to ultimately direct their energy in destructive patterns against themselves. I simply didn't see this. In fact, Donoso himself has this to say about his worldview: `Al describir un personaje lo desintegro. Un personaje es, por decirlo asi, treinta personajes y un solo'. And then there is the following: Donoso rewrote this novel in 5 months after originally taking 8 years to craft it, after a bout of temporary insanity induced by morphine after a haemorrhaged ulcer. He rewrote it, `dandole el orden que me habia sugerido la locura'. Or, to sum up these two points, the acute interest in multiple personalities may have less to do with socio-political considerations and more with Donoso's personal preference to view reality through a kaleidoscope. In any event, I don't see any self destruction of the self/consciousness at all. Fragmentation, yes. Collapse of unity, yes. But turning into an imbunche does not necessarily portray an annihilation of the id: Dividing and unifying into a mythical character represents to me a personal catharsis, the genesis of a creative process whereby the returning to a simpler form of life is not destruction but salvation of the soul.

Bottom line for me: OBN gels on an intellectual level but lets me down emotionally. It is also disconcertingly reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred years of Solitude (and no wonder, both authors are of the `boom' generation), but that was a book I couldn't finish.

At the start of this book I was deeply concerned that I wouldn't be a fan, by the end I was glued to the pages. Personally there were some portions of this work of surrealist fiction that didn't jive, but leaving that aside it is a fantastic piece of literature.

There is a massive vision to the book that cannot be overlooked, from the virgin birth to the old woman seeking the finger of the saint, the voyeurism, the painful and obvious exploitation of everyone involved, and the little packages that old women keep under their beds. This isn't a single read novel, and I think that it deserves a second full digestion to make full impact.

The translation is fabulous, and the characters are unforgettable. It is without doubt a tale that needs to be told, and one that encompasses so many lives and dreams that you are left wondering which is reality.

It is very diffult to even outline the plot for those who might be interested because this book is truly a spiders web with the main character of Humberto Penaloza at the center. Yet, when you look back on the story you begin to wonder if it isn't someone else who was truly the middle of this magical and mysterious work after all.

This is one of the best latinamerican books, further than magic realismus (realismo mágico) this novel traspasses all the borders beyond time, gender, reality and absurd. Dark novel that takes you into your own clue du sac. This wonderful story narrated by a mute man, who becomes all the voices in the novel, is like a monad of humanity, himself represents all the human disgraces, inherited from generation to generation and unable to scape fate. Must not be missed if you want to take a deep immersion into human condition.

This masterpiece by the late Chilean author José Donoso centers around the Azcoitías, a family of Chilean aristocrats. However, the main character, Humberto Peñaloza, is an assistant to Don Jerónimo, the last male heir of this family, who is at times a deaf-mute, a nun, and the doll for an teenaged orphan in a convent who is having a miraculous pregnancy -- or not.

The wife of the heir, Inés, cannot become pregnant, and there is great concern that the Azcoitía clan may fade into obscurity. Inés seeks assistance from Peta Ponce, the old woman who saved her life when she was a young child. Peta Ponce, who is feared to be a witch by Don Jerónimo, encourages Inés to lure Don Jerónimo to her own dark, dilapidated shack, and make love to him there. However, Humberto Peñaloza is also drawn to the shack at the same time, presumably by Peta Ponce's powers, as she is attracted to Humberto, and each man makes love to who he believes is Inés, although none of the characters, and certainly not the reader, is sure who makes loves to whom. In any case, Inés becomes pregnant, but gives birth to a monstrous child, called Boy.

Don Jerónimo decides that Boy should view himself as normal, and he builds a fortress for Boy to live in, and Humberto is given the task of rounding up the most dysmorphic freaks that can be found in the countryside, who become Boy's servants and companions.

Inés separates from Don Jerónimo, travels throughout Europe, has a nervous breakdown, and, upon her return to town, decides to take up residence in the Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales de la Encarnación, the church/orphanage/old widows' home that is owned by the Azcoitía family, but it becomes hers.

After Don Jerónimo "discovers" that Humberto has impregnated his wife during that fateful night and that he, in making love to Peta Ponce, has lost his manhood, Humberto is operated on by a doctor who is one of the freaks. He is transformed into a dysmorphic deaf-mute, and banished to the Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales de la Encarnación.

The story only becomes more surreal from there!

It wasn't until I had completed about 1/3 of the book until I had a clue as to what was going on, probably because I wasn't giving the book the attention it deserved. However, once it came together for me, it was absolutely captivating.