Born under strange circumstances to a high-society teenager and a
pentagenarian
entrepreneur, Jerónimo Rodriguez Loera is off to an inauspicious
start--then things get worse.
Through an assemblage of records, letters, and firsthand testimony of
Jerónimo's past lives,
Álvaro Enrigue creates a rich, observant, and dryly humorous account of
class and clashing in
Mexican society.
Perpendicular Lives opens in 1930s Guadalajara, but as Jerónimo
struggles toward maturity in a
family plagued with infidelities, vanities, and favoritism, the story
delves into Jerónimo's
previous lives as, among others, the Mongolian widow of a cloth merchant
and a monkhunter
with a penchant for gunslinging and public defecation. Under the
breakdown of his ostensible
parents' marriage, political turmoil, and the hypocrisy of New World
gentry, Jerónimo must
fight for his place in his family--and the world.
Named as one of the Bogotá39 and recipient of the Joaquín Moritz Prize,
Álvaro Enrigue is one
of the foremost voices in Latin American literature. In Perpendicular
Lives, Enrigue's historical
genius and mastery of myriad genres create an unconventional,
unforgettable narrative that
evokes the wry humor of Twain and the formal freedom of Joyce. The
result is a mind-bending and absurdist bildungsroman that explores the
meaning of the ties that bind us across class,
continents, and time.
