Underrated, b/c people just don't understand it.

books:


	• In Evil Hour Gabriel Garcia Marquez Harper Perennial, 1991 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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Decent Read

After having read "Love in the Time of Cholera," this book was certainly a step down. Although there are a few interesting passages worthy of deeper thought and discussions, overall the book isn't as captivating as his more popular works.

Off-stage action

"In Evil Hour" is a swift portrait of a Colombian town that connects the awful force of oppressive regimes to the bald paranoia of a town feeding itself rumor after rumor about its own citizens. The themes are there, but might seem obtuse upon your first reading. Still, the book pretty clearly says that tyranny leads to an abandonment of sense and a mean discontent, a desire to assert yourself by shaming the powerful when you have no democratic outlet for expression. This is a novel of the quietly disenfranchised and supposedly pious succumbing to the base desires of an evil hour.

The salilent point in grasping it all comes when you realize a lot of essential action is implied. Marquez has called Faulkner his "master" and here, while Marquez is still developing his own voice, he borrows heavily on Faulkner's style of orcing the reader to infer basic plot action. For example, Trinidad is arguably a lampooner. She's the one who first mentions them and she mysteriously falls sick when the curfew is set. Note thhe relationship betwen joyfully killing mice and her taking glee in the misfortunate of the lampoons. She's abused and belongs to a clergy robbed of real holiness and indepedence from the state; it's no small wonder she's vicious ... or that her replacement, Marquez implies, has placed more lampoons as the story concludes.

Another chief feature of Evil Hour is that it has no moral protaganist. The mayor is a government bully: his character is a wry, generous picture of a bored, opportunistic tyrannical hoodlum -- and the judge? The judge is lazy and corrupt beyond measure.

The priest is the most sympathetic main figure because he is devout and fatalistic at once. He lives his days in a sullen guilt at placing his church at the mercy of the state and offering people a brittle faith in the face of brutal dictatorship.

It's worth noting, biographically, that Marquez's bittersweet attitude toward tyranny comes from a correspondence and relationship with Castro.

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Interesting, but confusing.

This book is quite difficult for me to rate, because it didn't really follow the conventional plot structure of most other books I've read. There are so many interesting things going on but they all seem unconnected. For example, Marquez begins describing the events surrounding a group of people, and when you are just beginning to understand what is happening to them, he whisks you away to someone somewhere else and while trying to work out the link between this and the first group, he sends you to a third

Another thing about this book is that it assumes you have some knowledge of the events that happened in South America, (even if this is a mythical town) which means that some things might not make sense to you if you didn't happen to grow up there. I was wondering why the dentist was hated by the mayor (apparently he was involved in some subversive activity), and what the significance of Los pasquines were. There were also some unresolved issues in the novel, like did Trinidad's parents eventually find out about her abusive uncle? What happened to the mayor? and what about the `missing' boy?

It was this incompleteness that ruined what was otherwise an excellent book for me. The moral of the story, you should know some background information before you begin In Evil hour. Unfortunately my copy of the book did not have any introductory notes. It's a good story, and I'd recommend it, but like I said, it might be confusing for those not from South America.

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Underrated, b/c people just don't understand it.

In Evil Hour hasn't enjoyed the respect it should, as a contemporary masterpiece, at least on par with Love in the Time of Cholera.

Readers who cite a lack of plot have not fully explored this book. The reality of this novel is that all of the messages, most of the plot, and a good part of the action are implied, rather than explicitly stated. If one were available, I would recommend picking up a Cliff's Notes or Sparknotes for this book, due to the confusing structure and dense, recondite prose; none of the editions I have read so far has included an introduction or explanation of the book more thorough than what is written on the dust jacket.

Ultimately, If you're looking for some good, light, poolside reading, skip In Evil Hour - this is not that sort of book, and you will be left confused and unsatisfied with the book. However, if you are prepared to read it twice, carefully, in order to understand the subtexts and allusions, this book will enchant you and become a favorite.

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The dawn of the dead

"In Evil Hour" is one of the early novels written by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Published in 1962, it was previous to his "A Hundred Years of Solitude" and "The Autumn of the Patriarch", some of his most famous novels and that consolidated his style. Considering that, one can say that this novel is really good. It is not as fine tuned as his best works, there is no Magical Realism in here -- actually, the book is quite realist -- but it is such an engaging and well conceived story that it is impossible to stop reading.

The narrative is set in a small town ruled by a peculiar mayor. He fills the role of both mayor and deputy -- in other words, he is the law in that place. The citizens having been facing a small problem. Every morning someone finds in his, her door a bulleting anonymously written telling a gossip about him, her or the family. The strange thing is that the fact stated in the piece of paper is known by everyone, despite people not talking about it. So what is making the citizens tense is not what will be said but who is saying those things.

Solving this mystery is a job to the nameless mayor, but he is not very interested in it. To his knowledge this kind of gossip will stop sooner or later. He has a very interesting role in the book, since he is such a dubious character. As the reading progress, one can notice that he can't be simply described as good or evil. It is much more complex than that. So are townspeople. Márquez make them appealing folks with very interesting background stories to keep the pages moving.

"In Evil Hour" deals with politics, but in a very subtle way. Hints are given here and there about the recent changes the town has faced. The past seems to have been obscure, but we are never certain of that. Márques exploit heavy subjects that darken Latin American History with grace and seriousness and his peculiar sense of humor. And in the end we seem to have spent some time in that village, and however much we may have enjoyed it, we may not be willing to come back to that place -- although one may want to reread this book one of these days.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

Written just before One Hundred Years of Solitude, this fascinating novel of a Colombian river town possessed by evil points to the author's later flowering and greatness.