Down the Rabbit Hole

Down the Rabbit Hole: A novel
Juan Pablo Villalobos
Trans. from Fiesta en el Madriguera by Rosalind Harvey

A masterpiece.

All the horror, violence, corruption and grief of the drug war in Mexico, compressed into 70 pages, as narrated by the young, innocent, impressionable, precocious son of a drug lord.

Tochtli lives in a palace, surrounded by a retinue of servants, watchmen, and tutors; and his father, whom he idolizes in a confused way.  He is sure he is macho, and not a faggot; he and his father are in a gang, and he is sure that gangs are about solidarity and about not hiding things; he is sure that some of his retinue are deaf-mutes.

All of Tochtli's certainties are one by one overturned; but the only pain he speaks of is the recurring pain in his stomach, until he himself is a deaf-mute ...

Poignant, with touches of searing humor.  Or, as the precocious young Tochtli would say, Devastating.

4*
Nov 2103