Last week I remember including in my blog that as the books got more modern, they were getting easier to understand. I think I have to take back that statement for this week’s book. Although the actual language used in the book is more like the action/adventure novels I used to binge, the jumps in time and the narration style does offer to be confusing at times, often requiring a double back.
Although none of the main characters exactly make it out “well” or make it out at all in the story, this work still served to differ from the depressing tone and lives of the books we’ve read in past weeks. I got a sense of adventure, and I could feel the pressure of being on the run. Each main character had something they were dealing with, whether that be drug abuse or mental health issues. With the use of drugs and the cops nearing the desperados towards the end of the book, you can tell as a reader how these characters devolve and change knowing that their lives may end soon. This impacts the way they interact with each other and it is interesting to see inside the minds of criminals, people who can murder without thought.
After doing some light research on the actual events that the book is based upon, I wonder how many of the events were present and which were embellished by Ricardo Piglia. The robbery occurred in 1965 while the book was published in 2003, so many of the actual details could be lost to time. The author has also been sued three times for the depictions of certain people in this book, however without much success. But I am especially curious about the dynamics between characters, of course between the twins Dorda and Brignone, who were definitely real people but I’m not sure if the level of “more than friendsness” of their relationship is exclusive to the book or not. It’s interesting to me that Piglia includes elements of homosexuality in a time that I believe people did not accept it, referring to both the time of the events in the book and the time it was actually written. I feel that perhaps this inclusion could give the sense of sexual perversion, that these people are criminals of all calibers.
For this week’s question, if you could commit a crime but if you do then no one in the world can commit it anymore, what crime would that be?