Happy midweek everyone! Wow. We are already halfway through the week. How time flies. How has the year been going for you so far? I hope that the year has been kind to everyone. If not, I hope you will experience a reversal of fortune in the coming months. More importantly, I hope everyone is happy and healthy, in body, mind, and spirit.

With the midweek comes a fresh WWW Wednesday update, my first this year. WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme hosted originally by SAM@TAKING ON A WORLD OF WORDS. The mechanics for WWW Wednesday are quite simple, you just have to answer three questions:

  1. What are you currently reading?
  2. What have you finished reading?
  3. What will you read next?
www-wednesdays
What are you currently reading?

After spending nearly a month and a half reading the works of African writers, I am finally moving to another part of the literary world that I have rarely explored: South American literature. I hosted a South American Literature Month just once previously. Unfortunately, with my reading challenge backlogs and the year slowly drawing to a close, I am not sure if I will be staying long in this part of the literary world. The goal, however, is to tick off books from the aforementioned reading challenges, such as renowned Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, a book that is part of my 2023 Top 23 Reading List.

2666 is my second novel by Roberto Bolaño, after The Savage Detectives. I am glad I have already read The Savage Detectives – interestingly, it was part of my first South American Literature Month – because it somehow prepared me for 2666. Bolaño originally instructed his publisher, Jorge Herralde, to have the book published serial, even providing instructions on how they should appear and at what intervals. However, to preserve the book’s literary value, his publisher and his friend Jorge Echevarria, with the acquiescence of Bolaño’s heirs, had the book published in a single volume, Bolaño’s original had his illness not gotten worse.

The book is divided into five parts, with each part introducing a new set of characters. Each part also explored different subjects. The first part, The Part About the Critics, for instance, explored the nature of academic criticism, friendship, and romance. Meanwhile, the fourth part, The Part about the Crimes, is a section about crime after crime committed against women of different ages. These contrasts between the five parts make the story a little disjointed and a little complicated as I had to sift through the different elements to find the threads that tie them all together. I am pretty sure that Bolaño will tie it all out in the last part; I am already in the last part. Thankfully, the writing is accessible.

What have you finished reading?

I commenced my journey across South American literature with Laura Esquivel’s The Law of Love. The Mexican writer famously swept the world with her debut novel, Like Water for Chocolates which was published in 1989. Building on this initial success, she worked on her second novel,  La ley del amor. It would take time, however, for her second novel to be developed and published. It was finally published in 1995. A year later, it was made available to anglophone readers, with the title The Law of Love.

While her debut novel was a fusion of historical fiction and magical realism riddled with food, The Law of Love is an even more innovative literary piece that is comprised of several elements. Sure, details of magical realism and historical fiction are once again woven into the tapestry of the novel. It was enriched by details of folklore and speculative fiction. After all, the story commenced in a 23rd-century Mexico City where Azucena, an “astroanalyst” (a therapist who helps people come to terms with the unsettled business of their past lives), attempts to track Rodrigo, her “twin soul.” As time travel is introduced into the story, we meet different versions of both characters across time periods, starting when the Spanish colonizers established their stronghold in Mexico. With the novel zooming in and out of different time periods, it can get a little confusing. Still, it was a compulsive read. But what made the reading experience more interesting was the other media that comprised the novel. There were graphic novel elements and the novel came with a CD which can be played as one reads the book. Unfortunately, my copy did not have the CD.

What will you read next?