Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia.

This week’s novel was completely different than all the other ones I have read so far, I think it’s my first time reading a criminal book not watching a show about it. With heists and gun battles, social commentary and the criminal system as well as the complexity and sexuality of the characters, it was unique and different than the ones we’ve been reading, which had less actions, more streams of consciousness and repeated themes of growing up or Freudian concepts. Anyways, it was easier to read so I was less likely to get distracted or lose focus like I did for some of the other books.

I was very surprised to read that it was based on a true story, but was a bit disappointed to hear that the money burning bit was fictional. I think it would’ve been much more popular in the papers if it was true, in terms of the powerful message the action would convey. Probably the climax of the whole story and the idea of the title, the money burning scene caught my attention. It made me wonder about how money is such an integral part of our society that it even hurt me as a reader to see it burn and fall off to grounds, and it’s funny to think about how such a small, fragile piece of paper holds so much worth. I mean it’s understandable that the criminals burnt their money, it was no use for them as they knew they were going to die sooner or later, and it was their last act of rebellion, some sort of a last ‘fuck you’ to the cops who were part of the system. The citizens complain that they should’ve given the money to the poor, those living in need of basic necessities, but I doubt that’s how it would’ve played out if they did try to do that. It manifests a more complex message about the corrupt system that is of criminal justice. This may be unrelated but I, just today learnt about the disproportionate rates of indigenous people in prisons, and that around one third of the population of female inmates were indigenous, which is a clear overrepresentation. That astounded me! The people and the journals say that they are ‘crazed killers and immoral beasts’, but we can see that they are just as sentimental and complex humans that come from difficult backgrounds, which almost made me empathize with these people, except they probably really are what the people say, ‘pure evil’. It made me think about innocence and culpability, if money is separate from its owners or how it’s used as, and if it itself is innocent, guilty, or ‘neutral’, as it says in the book.

“Burning innocent money is an act of cannibalism”.

I also really enjoyed the style of the narration, it was written in mixture of telling the story as a third person narrator but also how they were written as in journals, which adds to the realistic, almost non-fictional? element. I kept imagining a sick thriller show like ‘Money Heist’ when I was reading the book.

My question is:

Did you empathize with the characters or would you hate them for their criminal acts? Why?