The Death of Artemio Cruz: A Novel
By: Carlos Fuentes/ Translated By: Alfred MacAdam / Narrated By: Tony Chiroldes
Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
Amazing events in Mexico’s history… as told by a total jerk!
Let’s start with the narration of Tony Chiroldes: It has to be good cuz he conveyed Artemio Cruz’s thoughts and choices, his actions with enough verisimilitude that one sits in ones chair, listening, gaping, coming to DESPISE Cruz as a man, and as a character.
I mean, I totally applaud author Carlos Fuentes for delivering us with sooo many truly important eras/events in Mexican history. Really, it’s all covered. But I sincerely question his creating a main character (I sooo can’t call him a protagonist even!) who is such a hateful, self-absorbed creep.
I dunno; maybe it’s cuz I’d just listened to the way she spoke, and was (in a brilliant fashion) beaten over the head with how deplorably women are treated and misused and threatened in modern-day Mexico, but I s’pose it all made this, The Death of Artemio Cruz, that laaaast thin mint that made me blow my dinner (See: Monty Python!). Artemio starts as fighting the good fight, with a song in his heart for a woman he barely knows, and he turns into a total misogynist who is also raping the country of its natural resources. And oh yeah—he’s the New Boss who’s the same as the Old Boss, what with his stealing of land, his mistreatment of the indigenous and the impoverished.
We’re talking 12+ hours here that feel like a million. I swear, I dozed off several times, only to wake up hearing him vilifying his wife and his family, saying they should be grateful for the opulent lifestyles that they have. And his family is no great shakes. I wanted to throttle a daughter who so audibly despised him that I wondered why she even bothered to join the deathbed vigil.
This is supposed to be a masterpiece, and if Fuentes intended to personify the absolute worst of Mexicans, well okay, then he did a spectacular job. If you’re new to Hispanic writing, avoid this like the plague. And for gosh sakes, if you think we SHOULD be building a Wall? Holy cow, you’ll find plenty in here to give you a disgust for the country, thinking every Mexican is just that obnoxious.
No, no, no!
For a masterpiece, please oh please, go to Bless Me, Ultima. Not to review that gem again, but that book made me feel a sense of pride in my heritage, and it exposed me to little-known aspects of the culture that were intoxicating.
Stay away, run away, run like the wind!
Just get away from The Death of Artemio Cruz as fast as you can, and shake the literary dust from your feet as you leave! Trust me: You do NOT want to be tracking a smidgen of this book wherever you may go.
Oh, but? The last five minutes were good. So there you go…
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