I love a good family saga. In “The Farm,” a trio of siblings reminisce on the history of the family farm located in the remote mountains of Colombia. Pilar, ever-loyal and selfless, wants to keep the farm in the family, no matter what it takes. Eva, traumatized by nearly being murdered at the farm by a local gang, wants nothing to do with it. And, Antonio, the baby of the family, is obsessed with researching the genealogy of the family and their familial roots in the country.

Beautifully written with such vivid perspectives from each character, I was wholly invested in the fate of these siblings and the farm. Except for Antonio – insufferably boring Antonio – who droned on and on in painful detail about the family tree. And, there’s a few things about Antonio that felt a little problematic to me, specifically his troubled relationship with his black husband. And, how he’s so utterly aloof and selfish.

This turned out to be one of my favorite reads of the month despite how much I dreaded Antonio’s chapters. I highly recommend it for fans of Latin American literature. ( )

Habría que pensar en qué medida es posible ser buena persona y enriquecerse, mejorar, en un sistema corrupto. Los personajes de Anita —emprendedora— y de Cobo —el padre, simpatizante comunista, que no acepta la homosexualidad del vástago y se replantea su vida entera cuando a su nieto lo secuestra la guerrilla— hacen bascular, entre dos polos, a protagonistas que encarnan visiones del mundo no antagónicas pero sí llenas de matices. Pese a la genética, la educación y el paisaje común de un paraíso de infancia, se conforman tres existencias distintas a golpe de violencias, amores y desamores, permeabilidad hacia otros espacios y costumbres.
La homofobia en una sociedad opresiva, la perversa voluntad de curarse, ofrecen momentos camaleónicos y brillantes como la primera experiencia sexual de Antonio. De su mano asistimos a la construcción de un pueblo que quiere tener nombre de utopía —Felicina— y acaba adoptando un topónimo bíblico, Jericó. Aun así, persiste la búsqueda de la felicidad.
No comparto ciertos aspectos ideológicos de La Oculta, pero no por elegancia como Anita, sino por admiración literaria, se la recomiendo vivamente. (https://elpais.com/cultura/2015/04/09/babelia/1428579437_069602.html) ( )

1er reserva temporada 2019-2020

Had to give this one up a little over halfway through; just couldn't get interested in it.

Surprisingly, this book was a drag. It has three interwoven narratives; three siblings think about their farm, and through their impressions and memories, the history of Colombia. Some interesting points about land ownership, capitalism, and political violence are bogged down by the individual siblings' bland bourgeois nostalgia. Problematic "opinions" about abortion, adoption, and homophobia among African-Americans are simply left unchallenged.

The prose is polished, graceful, lyrical. But it was so well-mannered and tedious. It was the final chapter that had any emotional heft; it puts into context modernisation & what people—whole societies—have lost in terms of their connection to nature. But 300 pages to get to something moving doesn't make sense. In between, it felt self-indulgent, tepid; characters looping around the same solipsistic concerns. The structure didn't work for me.

However, please take my review with a grain of salt as I predict this book will be widely praised for being a sprawling saga and a modern "literary classic" about Latin America. It is part of that subgenre of literary fiction that gets rave reviews, the subgenre I'll refer to as, "The Pain and Anguish of the Middle Class: We Just Want to be Left Alone with Our Money and Property because The World Out There is Distasteful and Icky and Taking a Political Stand is Unsophisticated". It has received good blurbs from literary heavyweights and good advance reviews in Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. I'm sure it'll find its readers.

Thank you to the publisher for an advance reading copy via NetGalley.
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