Fabian's Reviews > Pedro Páramo

A complete panorama composed of mood & atmosphere, "Pedro Paramo" came highly recommended by Mario Vargas Llosa in his "Letters to a Young Novelist" aka the writer's own poetics. I must say that I had some difficulty with the Spanish at first; it took me longer to get through the short book than I intended. The different vignettes come together to form the corpus of the awful man, brutal rancher, sadistic ladies man, Pedro Paramo (like different POVs coalesce in Mrs. Dalloway to describe & embody the actual character).

Certainly its an exercise in style. Like Hitchcock's famous "Psycho" shower scene in which the protagonist meets her demise halfway through the story, this one has a voice which talks from beyond the grave. All the different anecdotes, colors, and feelings mesh in the end, & it is assumed that the different ghosts of the tragically-tainted town all have their say. Here's a conglomeration of different voices and stories, of different experiences throughout time, through life & death. Authentic & extraordinarily unique.