THE NERUDA CASE – by Roberto Ampuero
(2012, Riverhead Books, Penguin Group)
9/29/2012
I saw this
recommended somewhere and tried to read it. But I found it very confusing. At
the same time, I started rereading “Seabiscuit” by Laura Hillenbrand and her
writing is a thousand times better, more engaging and clearer.
I can’t
read this Ampuero stuff. I can’t tell where we are or what is going on. I found
the sentences convoluted and confusing from the get-go.
The
beginning:
“What
could be bothering the partners of Almagro, Ruggierio & Associates, who had
asked him to appear at their headquarters in such a hurry?”
What? Why
not just say they called him and they were on the rag? Even the
names are boring. The sentence is long and wordy.
I managed
to wade through the first chapter, but then I got lost again. Slow,
boring and complicated. Not my
kind of stuff.
Where did
this guy learn to write, in a law firm?
His
purpose seems to be to obfuscate. To bore. To cloud the mind.
He's a typical acadmeic. Required to publish, whether his work is any good or not. You might
know he teaches at a university and is Chile’s ambassador to
Mexico. This writing is sad.
-- Roger
Copyright
© 2012, Roger R. Angle
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