The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts by Louis de Bernières
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My copy of this book is sort of battered, even though I’ve only read it twice now. That’s because I tend to take my time with it, reading in fits and snatches. I carry around with me during that time, shoving it in a backpack, and airline seat back, next to the bed, next to the sofa, or on the floor in my office. It’s almost a companion more than a book, a lost friend revisiting for a short while.
The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts is hilarious, tragic, sad, exuberant, disturbingly violent, magical and poignant. It’s got a structure that feels like a cobbled together collection of loosely-connected tales, although there’s a cohesion that belies more forethought than just a random gathering of pages. The characters are rich and humane, even the most terrible ones, the ones who deserve their awful fates. The plot is… meandering, if you insist on applying such an examination on the book as is required to understand plot at all.
Don Emmanuel is classified as magic realism, I suppose, but the real magic is the prose, the ebbing and flowing, wandering prose, the sentences that court and flirt and caress, making even descriptions of utter depravity readable and nearly acceptable. De Bernieres writes such that you want to trust him, put your faith in him that it’s good to hear these stories. He’s Aurelio, and you’re his daughter Parlanchina.
Maybe the best thing of all is that this is only the first book in a trilogy, and so if you’re smitten by de Bernieres and this anonymous South American country and it’s crazy, horny, brave and silly people, there’s still more to love and keep loving.