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The Sound of Things Falling, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
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Don't miss Juan Gabriel Vásquez's new novel REPUTATIONS, available September 2016!
* National Bestseller and winner of the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
* Hailed by Edmund White as "a brilliant new novel" on the cover of the New York Times Book Review
* Lauded by Jonathan Franzen, E. L. Doctorow and many others
From a global literary star comes a prize-winning tour de force – an intimate portrayal of the drug wars in Colombia.
Juan Gabriel Vásquez has been hailed not only as one of South America’s greatest literary stars, but also as one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. In this gorgeously wrought, award-winning novel, Vásquez confronts the history of his home country, Colombia.
In the city of Bogotá, Antonio Yammara reads an article about a hippo that had escaped from a derelict zoo once owned by legendary Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The article transports Antonio back to when the war between Escobar’s Medellín cartel and government forces played out violently in Colombia’s streets and in the skies above. Back then, Antonio witnessed a friend’s murder, an event that haunts him still. As he investigates, he discovers the many ways in which his own life and his friend’s family have been shaped by his country’s recent violent past. His journey leads him all the way back to the 1960s and a world on the brink of change: a time before narco-trafficking trapped a whole generation in a living nightmare.
Vásquez is “one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature,” according to Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, and The Sound of Things Falling is his most personal, most contemporary novel to date, a masterpiece that takes his writing—and his literary star—even higher.
- Sales Rank: #78953 in Books
- Published on: 2014-06-03
- Released on: 2014-06-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .80" w x 5.20" l, .55 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 302 pages
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, August 2013: Juan Gabriel Vasquez will draw comparisons to other major Latin American icons. But while the influence of Roberto Bolaño, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez are present throughout his second novel, The Sound of Things Falling, he is a unique literary talent. Translated from Spanish (and exceptionally well, at that), Vasquez moves swiftly and subtly, opening in Bogota, Colombia, reflecting on the mid-’70s when the country was being taken over by drug lords and cartels (fueled by the U.S.’s hunger for cocaine). Law professor Antonio Yammara finds his fate intertwined with that of a shady ex-pilot named Laverde. But Things Falling is so much more than a drug story. This is a sensory novel. Antonio wrestles with the way he interprets by his surroundings, by how the external world affects the internal. “[I]t’s always disconcerting to discover, when it’s another person who brings us the revelation, the slight or complete lack of control we have over our own experience.” The Sound of Things Falling does so much at once: it’s a novel about how the U.S. dangerously influences Latin America, how the present never escapes the past, and how fragile our relationships--romantic and familial--can be. --Kevin Nguyen
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. That story is to blame, declares a character in Colombian author Vasquez's latest novel (after The Secret History of Costaguana). Indeed, this book is an exploration of the ways in which stories profoundly impact lives. Around 1996, when murder and bloody mayhem fueled by the drug trade were commonplace in Bogotá, the young law professor Antonio Yammara befriends enigmatic stranger Ricardo Laverde. One night, assassins on motorbikes open fire on the two, killing Laverde and seriously wounding Yammara. Conflicted and at a loss to understand the damage Laverde has wrought, Yammara looks into his life story. Yammara suffers from crippling psychic and physical wounds as a result of the shooting, and his investigation takes him to Laverde's shabby Bogotá apartment, where he receives a gruesome clue from the grieving landlady. Yammara eventually finds Laverde's daughter Maya, a beekeeper who lives in the Colombian countryside. She shows Yammara photos and letters she's collected about the father she never knew. Together they lose themselves in stories of Laverde's childhood; of Maya's American mother, Elaine Fritts; and of Elaine and Laverde's love affair. Vasquez allows the story to become Elaine's, and as the puzzle of Laverde is pieced together, Yammara comes to realize just how thoroughly the stories of these other people are part of his own. Agent: Casanovas & Lynch Agencia Literaria (Spain). (Aug.)
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Ricardo Laverde does the one thing he must do—“A person doesn’t have to do anything but die”—cut down in the streets of Bogotá by the same drug lords he once served as a pilot. But in dying, Ricardo leaves behind a billiards-room acquaintance, Antonio Yammara, who lives with an ugly scar from a bullet fired by Ricardo’s assassins and with the daunting task of deciphering the hidden meaning of Ricardo’s life. Through the literary magic of one of Latin America’s most talented novelists, readers share that task with Antonio, probing the violence and fear spawned by the cruelly protracted drug war in which Ricardo perishes. Insistently pressing Antonio for the story behind Ricardo’s death is Maya Fitts, daughter of Ricardo and Elena Fitts, an American Peace Corps volunteer who long hides from her daughter the very existence of her criminal father and who herself dies aboard a plane taking her back to Colombia. As readers join Antonio and Maya in listening intently to the black-box recording from that plane, they will marvel at how Vásquez fuses past and present, hope and despair, in one unforgettable moment. A deft translation delivers the searing trauma and the tender intimations of a masterpiece. --Bryce Christensen
Most helpful customer reviews
159 of 167 people found the following review helpful.
"So you fell out of the sky too!"
By Jill I. Shtulman
My, oh my - what an incredible novel. This is the kind of novel that made me brush everything aside and read voraciously, devouring every single word and dreading arriving at the end. Yes, it's that good!
Set in Bogota, Colombia, our narrator, Antonio, becomes twinned to an enigmatic and shadowy ex-pilot named Ricardo Laverde, whom he meets in a Bogota billiard hall. Ricardo has been imprisoned for many years for reasons that take time to be revealed. (The refrain is: "He must have done something.") Antonio is with Ricardo during a drive-by motorbike shooting that ends one life and destroys the other.
What follows is one of the most harrowing descriptions of PTSD I've read as Antonio lives in terror of everything. The only salvation for him is to uncover the facts behind the life of the mysterious "ghosted" Ricardo and Colombia's ignoble past.
That is only the early foundation of this book. It touches on many themes: the tentacles of the drug business in Colombia and how one person's actions can have a boomerang effect on so many others. How it feels to live with a "terrible awareness of my vulnerability" - where planes fall from the sky, where bullets fell the innocent, where memories burst out of nowhere to transform and paralyze those who live through it.
As Antonio reflects on the unsuspected intensity of his memories, which are "just now beginning to emerge like an object falling from the sky", he thinks: "My contaminated life was mine alone: my family was still safe: safe from the plague of my country, from its afflicted recent history: safe from what had hunted me down along with so many of my generation (and others, too, yes, but most of all mine, the generation that was born with planes, with the flights full of bags and the bags of marijuana, the generation that was born with the War on Drugs and later experienced the consequence)."
I must note that Mr. Vasquez does not place the drug war as front-and-center of his book; rather, his purpose is to display how things fall apart in a world that forces good people to relinquish their own feelings of control. As we fall out of the sky, only redemptive love can save us. By the end of the book, I had tears in my eyes from the sheer power of the writing. Kudos to Anne McLean for a beautiful translation of a must-read book.
104 of 119 people found the following review helpful.
Deep and thoughtful, but dense.
By DanD
Juan Gabriel Vasquez's THE SOUND OF THINGS FALLING is an intriguing, if slow, look into Columbia's past and present. It begins with a story of an escaped hippo--a fugitive from a zoo belonging to drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. What fallows is an investigation into Columbia's recent, violent past, figure-headed by Antonio Yammara, who once saw an acquaintance of his get gunned down right before his eyes.
There's a lot going for THINGS FALLING: lush prose, a rich backstory, and a truly interesting subject matter. However, instead of getting lost in the prose, the reader often hits a brick wall--a points, this feels more like thinly-disguised journalism. It's as though Vasquez either couldn't decide what to write (fiction or nonfiction), or chose to create a hybrid of the two. (Most likely, the latter.) While the idea is interesting, the book may have been better if the nonfiction accents were either toned down, or enhanced (i.e., a solid work of nonfiction). As is, this is a novel for some, but not all. Those who sink their teeth into it, however, will certainly come away with something worthwhile.
94 of 108 people found the following review helpful.
Epic, haunting and beautifully written
By Leslie N. Patino
Juan Gabriel Vásquez's "The Sound of Things Falling" is epic, haunting and beautifully written. I read an article about it in "Time" magazine on July 31st, one day before the novel's English release. Within twenty-four hours, I had read the entire book.
"Falling," as some people have referred to it in English, is the story of Antonio Yammara, a 29-year-old, university law professor in Bogotá, Colombia who has always excelled intellectually. His comfortable, carefree world is soon blown away. First, a former student turned lover announces she's pregnant and carrying his child. At the same time, Antonio, who plays billiards to unwind, has sort of befriended an enigmatic older player. Ricardo Laverde has shared a few intriguing bits of his life, mostly in a woozy state over drinks. One afternoon, as the men walk along a street after leaving the billiards hall, they become the targets of a drive-by motorcycle shooting. Ricardo is killed. Antonio is seriously wounded--physically and mentally. For Antonio, several years of PTSD follow and a long journey to discover the secrets of his acquaintance. The story covers some eighty years of real-life Colombian history and the personal lives of several generations of fictional families.
To fully appreciate "Falling," it helps to have some knowledge of Colombian history and culture and of the tremendous impact of the drug cartels over the last half century. If you don't have that, Wikipedia can pretty well fill in the gaps. In 2011, I spent a week in Bogotá. I visited bookstores and asked for current best-selling novels (in Spanish). I read two of three books I bought and the third one--most highly praised by the sales' assistant--languished in the "someday" pile. Guess what it was?
I pulled it out yesterday afternoon and cut away the cellophane wrapping, typical in Latin America. "Falling" won the 2011 Premio Alfaguara, one of the highest honors in Spanish-language literature. Some of the most prestigious writers in Latin America sit on its panel. I could relate to Elaine, the idealistic American who went off to Colombia and to change the world in her youth. I went to Mexico. My story is less dramatic. Mexico's story today is Colombia's in the 1980's and '90's.
If you want to truly understand the global impact of "recreational" drugs in the U.S. and what the future holds, "The Sound of Things Falling" is a great place to start. It may not pop up in your dreams, but it did in mine last night.
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