A review by dianapharah
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo

mysterious tense
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.75

Juan Rulfo said, "Pedro Páramo is a spoken language." And to that I say, perhaps blasphemously, I believe my enjoyment of this story would benefit greatly from an orated, cinematic medium.

2.75 — The main character is not Pedro Páramo or even Juan Preciado; it's Comala, a city that gives and takes, the era of giving long gone and replaced by the shadowy taking. A cycle of biting the hand that feeds and being bit in turn, viciously perpetuated until there remains no more hands to neither hold nor harm. Whatever line exists between the living and the dead is almost non-existent in this ghost town, as is the case for the various narrators and alternating timelines. Which would've been dandy if it all came together into a completed jigsaw puzzle, but, for me, those fragments remained relatively fragmentary and never quite merged into something greater.

Definitely a book I wish I could've read in an academic context. Left feeling very "what, that's it?"; nevertheless, I'm glad to have read it. Maybe I'll reread Pedro Páramo one day and enjoy it so much more since I can focus on synthesis rather than merely keeping up with the who, when, and where. That aside, the prose was beautiful, and Rulfo has a way of transferring into his readers the very hopelessness, pain, and sorrow plaguing the inhabitants of this town, transcending generations and geographies.