I loved this book. The narration from a child’s perspective really made the story stand out, and had me hooked from the beginning. There’s just something about viewing the world from a child’s perspective that keeps you captivated with whatever story they have to tell. Thinking back to the other novels we have read, I would say the narration in this was far more believable. Children tend to be honest about what they see and experience, and while there were parts that were more fictitious, it wasn’t enough to make me second-guess the narration.

Moving on, I couldn’t help but think about the show Narcos, as I read the book. In the series (and in real life) Pablo Escobar was a notorious drug dealer, who committed other crimes (like murder) that no one but the people he sent to do the crime, knew about. In a way he was an enigma to his family, especially his daughter, just like Papi in the book. While we don’t learn or see much of his daughter throughout the series, I couldn’t help but picture her narrating this book. In the series she grows up with her father being absent most of the time, and doesn’t understand what kind of man he is. For example, when there’s a bombing at her house, that makes her lose hearing in one ear, she’s too young to realize it’s because of her father’s lifestyle that she gets injured. She kind of lives in this “bubble” that only exposes so much of her father. Anyways, I won’t go into further detail about this show but for those who haven’t seen it, I definitely recommend it.

Back to the book, there was something about the flow of the novel that made me feel slightly uneasy. At times it felt like we were getting somewhere with who Papi was, but then he would “disappear” and you began to feel lost again. It was kind of frustrating that his character was such an enigma, but it also added to the effect of what the narrator had to be feeling in the novel. I also couldn’t help but feel slightly unsettled by the way the narrator continued to love her father, despite the kind of man he was. He showed her his good and bad side, yet despite that she loved him. I guess this went to show just how much trauma she had from her father’s absence, and how she didn’t know how to deal with it. Overall, the book was an interesting read, and the elements of sadness and fantasy made it stand out.

Question to think about: Throughout the novel the narrator retells the story as a mix of make-belief and real events. Which got me wondering, do you think the “made-up” aspects of the story was a way for the narrator to deal with the trauma of having her father be an absent figure in her life?