Name: Pedro Páramo
Rating: 3.897058823529412 (102 reviews)
ISBN: 9781852427269

Juan Rulfo

As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death.Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro P?ramo - lover, overlord, murderer. Rulfo?s extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. To read Pedro P?ramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico nearly fifty years ago.

Pedro Páramo

Dani

De primeras parece que va a contar la historia del narrador, Juan Preciado, en busca de su padre: Pedro Páramo. Pero pasadas unas pocas páginas te das cuenta de que no es ese el curso que va a seguir la historia. Con un narrador tremendamente confuso (por lo menos para la primera lectura) relata una serie de episodios difíciles de ubicar en tiempo y en personajes. Se hace un poco más fácil cuando te hace click y te das cuenta de la extraña conexión con lo sobrenatural y lo fantástico. A partir de ahí no sabía muy bien qué esperar y me encontré leyendo un poco como una novela de misterio, con lo que eso conlleva. Es entendible e incluso apropiado el estilo complicado, dado que es un tema confuso. Además, satisface con alto contenido poético. "Cada suspiro es como un sorbo de vida del que uno se deshace." Lo que no me permite darle ni cuatro estrellas es que leída la última página me vi pensando "¿Ya está? ¿Todo esto para qué?". Me quedé con ganas de una gran revelación o algo que explicase la necesidad de tanta complicación. Tampoco es un libro que me transmita nada especial, esa magia de la que la gente habla. Es probable que me haya perdido muchas cosas mientras buscaba el sentido y por eso no lo he entendido. Dicho desde mi ignorancia literaria, siendo sincero.

Rulfo, Juan.

Pedro Páramo

hallucinogenic fever dream of the dead. this one made my head spin a bit. the entire book felt exactly like the experience of dreaming, but with mexican heat and smells and superstitious spirituality.

Kat Albanese

sash.

Of all the Hispanic fiction I've read, I'm quite certain this is the only one that has ever left me as puzzled, confused and at a loss. This is one of those books that cannot just be devoured all in one go. It has to be stripped away in layers until you get to the heart of it and that's what I think I'll do with this one. A very beautifully written book. 

I solidly believe that as far far as writing style goes, nothing beats the Latin Americans. Rulfo, Borges, Allende, Garcia Marquez and more- they are all MASTERS at this story-telling bit. One could wish that they could completely turn story-telling upside down the way these people have and Rulfo, make no mistake, is definitely one of the most underrated Hispanic writers. 

I ended up reading this-let me stress it- only because of my 20th Century Spanish-American Narrative class at uni and I really hope to be able to have time to read it again.

The language was beautifully, the characters dark and gloomy and entirely too reminiscent of my own country. At the core of this story is Mexican mythology at its finest, the heart of Mexicanidad and the stark truth of caciquismo.

It's a beautifully told story, at times very difficult to swallow because of the vivid images of suffering, oppression and the ever pervasive death. Of course, if you know anything about Mexico, you know that death is an entirely different ideology and something of a cult. You get to see that part of the culture in the book and it's extremely fantastic.

Magical realism at one of its best. It took me a LONG time to read this simply because life happens and I wanted to absorb as much of this book as possible.

Well worth the read.

Aixa Azul

"Hay pueblos que saben a desdicha. Se les conoce con sorber un poco de aire viejo y entumido, pobre y flaco como todo lo viejo. Éste es uno de esos pueblos, Susana."

Swearing to his dying mother that he'll find the father he has never met, a certain Pedro Páramo, Juan Preciado sets out across the barren plains of Mexico for Comala, the hallucinatory ghost town his father presided over like a feudal lord. Between the realms of the living and the dead, in fragments of dreams and the nightly whispers of Comala's ghosts, there emerges the tragic tale of Pedro Páramo and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul.

Maytal

I think if I gave this another go at a later date I'd get more out of it.

Gary Homewood

A fractured, hallucinogenic death-themed magic realist narrative. Probably better on a second read.

Pedro Páramo

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