AUTHOR: Juan Carlos Chirinos
PUBLISHER: La Huerta Grande Editorial
GENRE: Novel
READER’S NAME: Lynn Leazer
DATE: June 8, 2020

While Los cielos de curumo held my interest for the entire length of this relatively short novel, in the end it failed to deliver the narrative punch its enigmatic style kept promising. The main literary device the author uses, and perhaps abuses, is point-of-view. Mostly written in the first person, the novel challenges the reader to figure out who the improbably omniscient narrator is. Is it a vulture, the vulture-filled skies overhead, or some sort of god? There is no one character in the story that could have witnessed all the action that is recounted, and the ever-changing you is confusing at first. Nonetheless, the dialogue is crisp and authentic, the descriptions evocative, and there is enough action and suspense, if not an actual plot, to keep the reader sufficiently engaged and intrigued to find out how the characters' lives finally intersect and what happens to them in the end. Two groups of off-beat but rather one-dimensional characters are drawn amid much portentous description of nature, a strong dose of political intrigue and corruption, and some good old drugs, sex and jazz, set amidst the current sociopolitical disaster in Venezuela. These themes and subject matter should resonate well with readers in the U.S.

This novel is not plot-driven, but rather idea driven. In the second section of the book, which starts more than two-thirds of the way through, the narrator (who at this juncture seems to be speaking for the author) addresses the reader directly and expounds about first-person point-of-view being the only possible point-of-view due to our inability to escape from ourselves, our fates, and our memories, and the impossibility of second chances that might serve to improve the aforementioned.

All we can do is wait and witness as catastrophe ensues. While these ideas are extremely interesting to ponder, the technique is rather heavy-handed and would have been much more enjoyable to contemplate if revealed through the actions and words of the characters and development of the plot rather than a blunt-force essay by the author that is awkwardly and unnecessarily wedged into the story. The writing is at its best with the dialogue and mood-setting. A sense of foreboding is very well developed with elegant descriptions of the rain-turned-deluge in Caracas and the constant presence of vultures that ominously surveil the human activity, hoping for death and a good meal.

I do not foresee any major difficulties in translating this novel into English.