January 25, 2021
Novelist and journalist Villoro (God Is Round) delivers an erudite and idiosyncratic look at Mexico City and the “fears, illusions, utter annoyance, and whims of living in this place.” Combining the intricacies and peculiarities of the contemporary city with recollections of his childhood there, Villoro describes, for example, how at the age of “ten or twelve,” he and friend would go on hours-long expeditions by sneaking into the back of a milk truck. For people waiting in line to engage with one of the “infinite tasks of government” that take place in Mexico City, a street vendor’s torta de tama “works as a tranquilizer,” Villoro writes, “but only as long as you’re chewing it... after, it becomes a long-term annoyance, harder to digest than the bureaucratic business itself.” He also describes the city’s cafés, its commuting culture (certain streets “are a parking lot that sometimes moves”), pre-Hispanic mythologies, and the lives of its street children. Throughout, Villoro weaves in literary references (Amado Nervo, Alfonso Reyes, Ezra Pound) and offers stinging critiques of the country’s plutocracy, whose “luxury depends on poverty.” Though Villoro’s fragmentary approach can be disorienting, this is a stimulating portrait of one of the world’s most mind-bending metropolises.
February 1, 2021
Journalist and novelist Villoro has been writing about Mexico City for over 20 years. Originally published in Spanish in 2018, his latest book brings his wealth of experiences to bear. Through a collection of personal stories, geographical essays, social histories, and biographies, he weaves a nonlinear account of Mexico City--because the story of Mexico City is nonlinear. It is a city that exists in and out of chronology and is both defined by and defines its space. He explores the city's vast history, from prehistory and Spanish colonial entradas to the present, and wanders through its spaces in what may appear to be a haphazard format. But he has a reason for grouping the stories by places, characters, ceremonies, and more. His design gives readers the opportunity to decide on their own where to start and where to end, much like a traveler or visitor would decide what spaces to explore. In so doing, readers create their own personal version of the story. VERDICT Villoro is not for the casual reader but for those who are interested in a deeply complex yet personal social history of Mexico City. The book serves as a nice complement to The Mexico City Reader (2004).--Michael C. Miller, Austin P.L. & Austin History Ctr., TX
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 1, 2021
Mexican novelist and journalist Villoro (The Reef, 2017) applies his witty and incisive pen to the monster that is Mexico City, aka Chilangopolis. Villoro put together this collection of essays written throughout his career to create a narrative that most resembles a road map and that should not necessarily be read from front to back but, rather, unfolded at random or with specific intent. Intentional reading can be guided by recurring categories: "Places" (Tepito, Santo Domingo), "City Characters" (the milkman, the quack), "Ceremonies" (coffee with poets, the Passion at Iztapalapa), "Shocks" (street children, the influenza epidemic), "Living in the City" (Villoro's memories), and "Crossings" (changes in the city over time). Villoro roves through a variety of genres, from high comedy involving a bureaucratic encounter to memoir to the tragedy of the 1985 earthquake. Villoro's voice is engaging, and the subject matter is fascinating. Unfortunately, the translation is clunky and over-literal, making some passages difficult to follow, but overall, this is an unusual and rewarding read for all who love or are intrigued by Mexico City.
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Starred review from January 15, 2021
A deeply learned appreciation of the author's native Mexico City. Trained as a sociologist but well known to Spanish-speaking readers as one of Mexico's most acclaimed novelists, Villoro writes appreciatively of a city that is constantly changing--and whose landmarks are different for each generation, if they haven't been torn down in the course of rebuilding or destroyed by earthquakes. For him, the "outstanding sign of the times is the Latin American Tower," built in 1956, the year of the author's birth, and then one of the rare buildings in Mexico City to be more than a few stories tall, since the plateau on which the city sits is both tectonically active and so sandy that building collapse is a real danger. In his lifetime, Villoro notes, the territory embraced by the city megalopolis "has spread out like wildfire" and "grown seven hundred times." Growth, he adds, "meant spread," so much so that to find Villoro's house, located on a street named for the revolutionary figure Carranza, you would have to know which one of 412 streets and avenues named for Carranza it was on. Natural and cultural landmarks are matters of memory and nostalgia, he writes, and since "Mexico-Tenochtitl�n buried its lake, and the smog blotted out the volcanoes," there are few points of orientation. As such, memory has to make up for the destruction of the environment. Along his leisurely, illuminating path, Villoro delivers an essential update of Octavio Paz's The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). He can be both brittle and funny, as when he dissects the overstaffed and bureaucratized retail sector. "Although overpopulation is one of our specialties," he writes, "we have an abundance of stores where there are few customers and an excessive number of workers," one of whom, the manager, serves as "a final potentate, a Chinese emperor in his Forbidden City." Celebrating food, wandering through earthquake-struck ruins, reflecting on literary heroes, Villoro makes an excellent Virgil. An unparalleled portrait of a city in danger of growing past all reasonable limits.
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