Read with S and A, during one of my last few weeks in Chicago. By complete coincidence, we met up in Hyde Park, where the Chicago Boys must have walked around in the 60s, before returning to + building the Chile we read about in the novel - nothing is ever really that far away, is it...
This book is kinda about the deeply relatable phenomenon of getting into a thing (revolutionary politics) because of a crush and how that’s fine and actually really lovely, but also it’s paired with this deep deep reverence for the ways we are / our Queen is already all caught up in it, even without being roped in by the man with the ‘macho marxist eyes.’ We get this gossipy braiding of love + politics to remind us that two are fucking, on the beach, and then it all ends with this perfect line - I fell in love with you like a rabid bitch, and you let yourself be loved. Do you realize, my dear, that the attack was my failure too?
With all this talk about love, Lemebel steps up to the task with his sinewy, luxurious, truly lovely grasp of language (i can only imagine reading the untranslated original). It’s all very romantic, and mirrors his broody author portrait tucked away in the back sleeve of the book. As readers, we’re treated to depictions of love that spoil like rotting chicken bones left at the end of a picnic, headaches heavy like pisco-soaked cotton. An irreverence for the cops, written about as tenderly as the Queen’s last night in the house on the corner, when he had to flee with all his most precious objects. Reality and dreamworld between the Queen and the ‘King’ are written with the same quality of attention, resulting in these haunting dream sequences.
Other favorite parts include Pinochet’s wife, and also the boiling down of Pinochet’s political trajectory to a single traumatic childhood birthday party lmao.
Finally, a lil nod to the beautiful beautiful dedication at the beginning. To Julio Guerra, my heart clenches when I remember his gentle eyes and his body like a trampled carnation…to the woman in the grocery store, as gossipy as they come but as silent as the tomb when questioned. And also, to the house, where electric utopias whirled throughout the purple nights of those times.
250605
🏡