Chronicle of San Gabriel by Julio Ramon Ribeyro - Review & Giveaway
Travel by book. It’s the only hope most of us have to go globetrotting and see places we’ve dreamed of, always feared, or never even heard of. In Chronicle of San Gabriel, Julio Ramon Ribeyro will take you to a Peru you never knew existed. Based on his own experience, this fictional work recounts one 15-year-old boy’s trip with his skirt-chasing, ever-drinking uncle to visit relatives in the mountains of Peru. The world he discovers there at the family hacienda is like nothing he could have fathomed.
The hacienda of San Gabriel is more of a pit stop, being the only place along the way for travelers to rest for the night and get a home cooked meal and perhaps a few too many adult beverages. While a large number of rebellious cousins and quarreling aunts and uncles call it home, others drift in and out causing a constantly changing series of interactions between contrasting people in the middle of nowhere - a sort of mini galaxy.
I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between Chronicle of San Gabriel and one of my favorite books The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. In both instances, you have an unusual group of people placed together in a remote location. Both groups form their own hierarchies, smaller groups, etc. as people are prone to do. But in Chronicle of San Gabriel, the outcome is more wild, passionate, and even sometimes lawless than the mostly-European group in The Magic Mountain. Oh, would I love to sit down and talk with someone else who has read both! This could consume the better part of an afternoon.
If you’d like to win your own copy of this fascinating book, I have one to give away. As usual, there are three ways to enter: 1.) Subscribe to this blog to be entered into this and all future giveaways here. 2.) Leave a comment telling me what intrigues you about this book (something more than “Sounds good” is kindly requested). 3.) Post a link back to this giveaway on your blog. Or do all three, and you have three entries. The winner will be drawn on April 3, 2008, at 12noon EST. (Please enter themommyspot(at)gmail(dot)com into your address book so you don’t miss the email telling you the book is yours.)
This looks like a good read!
I’m fond of the exotic and the risqué. Sounds like this is up my alley.
Awesome - Peru is intriguing to me.
I would love to Peru-se this book…..my children are too young for me to do any serious globetrotting — so this book might take me away……for a while.
very intriguing
the cover intrigues me!
The idea of complex relationships being explored in a remote location in a foreign culture intrigues me.
I have gone to visit the areas I read about in the past, especially in Michener novels.
The interactions between people in this group in Peru and the resulting outcomes intrigues me about this book.
His wild adventure intigues
me !
My grandparents frequently visited Peru (lived there for a while, if I remember correctly), so it would be interesting to read about his version of Peru and compare it to theirs.
My girlfriend is headed to Machu Picchu later this year — it would be great to win this for her!
i would love to read about this great place …
Any kind of writing about foreign travel intrigues me! I’d love to read it!
Sounds like my kind of book, travel and meet people without leaving home.
The combination of different people thrown together by circumstance sounds really interesting!
I would like to read
Thanks for having a giveaway. I posted a link about your giveaway on my blog: http://trishtheconqueror.wordpress.com/
When I was in 5th grade, I had to choose a South American country to do a report on, and I chose Peru. Since then, I have been fascinated with the country. Plus, I love books that take me to new places - I travel through literature!
I have the mad travel itch, but I also have a mountain of debt and a spouse now with his own mountain of debt, so travel-by-book is all I can do. I am definitely subscribing to your link!
Have been reading ribeyro’s short stories in spanish and am very curious to see how his masterful story writing and irony comes across in english.His short stories are beautifully constructed , to start with , simple ,opaque style , then you are gradually, subtly lulled into accepting Ribeyro’s hyper -normal fictional world (usually lima, often with a julio as the protagonist)until the reader has his/her preconceptions blasted from them in the most surprising way . they really make you think about Peru , politics , social injustice and the absurdities of life while making you laugh at the same time.He is greatly under rated as a Peruvian writer and should be much more widely read , an ostensibly unflashy writer whose works still have a strong resonance now , and will continue to do so. I’d enjoy discovering his talents as a novelist, too.