At times the novel reads like an existential text. Its concern with the tension between word and deed (the father’s interest in rhetoric is reflected in the novel’s obsession with the spoken word) eventually explodes into a realisation that word is deed. The informers of the title do a great deal just by speaking; the son’s persistent verbal enquiries, and the words that he extracts from his sources, have the power to change lives utterly. The reality of cause and effect — the fact that by speaking or doing, we prove our existence — forms a consolatory philosophical centre to an otherwise bleak narrative.
Vásquez handles this electric material efficiently and with some panache. Colombian writers must inevitably work in the shadow of the master, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But with this thrilling effort, Vásquez goes some way towards taking up the torch.
On the night before the Battle of Cold Harbor in 1864, many of the Federal soldiers wrote their names on slips of paper they pinned to their backs so their families could be informed of their deaths. One made a last diary entry, the line which is reproduced here.
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.