The War Of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1997) - Plot & Excerpts
I feel inherently bad whenever I decide to rate a book with such a dismal rating as “1 Star.” Yes, I am fully aware that my opinionated “1” means diddlysquat in the totality of things; that I am just a minuscule reader, one of millions, and my less than stellar rating is predictable should a publisher or an author apply even the most rudimentary standards of the law of averages. Yet even so, there is a dread and a hollowness that comes when I find myself decisively clicking “1” as a measure of the quality of a bygone reading experience.I guess I feel this numbness at being so potentially hypercritical because I know that a book is a creation of a different bent. A book isn’t made with the same casualness as tossing together an uninspired and soggy Cesar salad. A book also isn’t a machinated amalgamation, the sum total of spokes and wheels and levers coming together to produce a bounded copy with words spawned by an errant thoughtlessness.No. A book holds life-force. A book is breathed into being with the sweat and toil and trepidation of another living soul. Someone lost sleep typing its pages. Someone ran late to Bat Mitzvahs and retirement parties just so they could capture that evanescent and fleeting image before it receded into the back of their cluttered mind. Someone practiced months, if not years, of abnegation, denying themselves simple charms and pleasures just to give life to the inkling of a tale that was dancing around the edges of their brain. Someone was bold enough to forego inhibition and to present their work and their baby to the world to be received or rejected. At the end of the day, a book is but a simulacrum of the will and determination of a human soul, and to give it a “1” feels like I am spitting on someone’s magnum opus.See, when I read a book I am aware that I am gazing into the innermost life of someone. Sure, they may gloss over things with inexplicable events or unbelievable characters, but I know that somewhere in those pages lies hints at the foundation of beliefs that said author ascribes to. A book is revelatory, in ways that a picture can never be.Therefore, the decision to rate The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts a “1” was both a heady and a weighty one. It was a little easier to make given that I seem to be the anomaly, and most have developed fond and positive feelings toward this book, but nevertheless, it was still a rating that I subconsciously wanted to withhold. So, what went wrong? To start, there was too much farce and not enough substance. This novel tells the tale of a fictitious internecine war between politicos in an unnamed South American country. Guerrillas vs. Communists. Liberals vs. Maoists. Government vs. Military. And a number of other interlocking combinations of battles that would give Fibonacci’s Number a run for its money. Quite frankly, the cause or reason for the war was hard to understand, which I believe was by author’s intent. This was designed to be satirical, with De Bernieres making a statement of how the wars of men are fought over the most paltry and indeterminable things. However, the tone throughout this “war” was perhaps too light. Rape and murder and torture and coups and landmines and decimation of entire villages was presented with a humor laced nonchalance that made them feel like nonevents. I felt nonplussed by almost every horror, not because I am a sadist, but because these grotesqueries were happening with such a brevity and rapidity that it left me unmoved. But perhaps even more damning was the fact that the characters in this book were flat and underdeveloped. The characters felt like nothing more than a motley crew of screw-ups with cereal box backstories, which meant that their successes and failures inspired little empathy or emotion. And because this book was structured with shifting POV’s, those few characters who were interesting and redeemable were given such little face time that they too began to feel like scenery to a jumble of a tale. Even Don Emmanuel, the book’s namesake, was an afterthought of a character whose eponymous placement in the book’s title seems to be the most whimsical and capricious of mysteries. I came into this book with high expectations. I was expecting a book that was sultry, magical, well-written, and tempered with a balanced humor. Instead I only received glimpses of beautiful writing that was lost in a fog of excessive extremes in terms of comedy and fancy. I expected this book to be a doppelganger of an Isabel Allende or a Gabriel Garcia Marquez work, but its lack of deftness and restraint and to be quite frank again, realism, made this book a hard one for me to enjoy. I don’t think I have ever finished and closed a book with such a marathon runner’s weariness, glad to have crossed the finish line and to be able to move on to something else.
There are far too many characters and events to offer a sensical summary, but I'll give it a shot. We're in an imaginary South American country where an endless battle is going on between the government, the military, and guerilleros (many are communist) with civilians more or less suffering the consequences. This book is hilarious and fun to read and doesn't feel even remotely tragic, despite the fact that it's extremely violent and gory - there is rape, murder, torture, kidnapping, gun and machete battles, coups, etc. But there is also discussion of dingleberries, goofy turns of events that are based on lack of communication or several evil characters all trying to kill each other. There are magical bits like the plague of cats, the ancient soldiers coming to life, the magical healing of Francoise's cancer, and the President's focus on alchemy. There are little nuggets of tongue-in-cheek philosophy.A few pages in, I let go of ensuring I kept perfect track of the characters and just let the story carry me along for the ride. For the most part I kept everyone straight, and honestly this book is an enjoyable romp no matter what. It's hilarious, it's absurd in a telling way, it's disgusting, it's violent and horrific but somehow avoids being tragic, and it's absolutely brilliant. I loved a discussion of patriotism towards the beginning of the book and how there are two types of patriots. The first type believes that all other countries are inferior to their own and that their country is never ever wrong so the best thing to do is dominate. The second type sees faults but loves his country anyway and therefore labors to correct these faults. The first kind of patriot really glories in his own irrationality, while the second kind glories in his homeland. My favorite bits were the sprinklings of semi-universal wisdom that are sprinkled throughout. This is where the author's playful voice really shines. Some examples: "They are a people who have learned by their own blood the wondrous disadvantages of an eventful history." "Life is nothing if not a random motion of coincidences and quirks of chance; it never goes as planned or as foretold; frequently one gains happiness from being obliged to follow an unchosen path or misery from following a chosen one." "A general rule that applies to all humankind... people always think that if they are very expert at something, that thing must therefore be extremely important." "Old friends shook hands and people who had never talked in the past exchanged confidences. Such things are caused not by fear but by the revelation that there is nothing stable in the whole universe and that everything is finally a matter of chance, which can so suddenly throw the lives of people into chaos." "The truth is that the mountains are a place where you can find whatever you want just by looking, as long as you remember that they do not suffer fools gladly and particularly dislike those with preconceived ideas." "There is nothing at all wrong with our laws and institutions and our constitution, which are all democratic and enlightened. What is wrong is that they are enforced by people who do not consider themselves bound by them."Themes: South America, politics, humor, magical realism, many characters, war, race
What do You think about The War Of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1997)?
Having enjoyed Captain Corelli's Mandolin I picked up the box set of 3 of de'Berniere's earlier novels including this one - his first. To be honest I found it a bit boring. It took me half of the book to understand exactly what was going on and who was on who's side of the fight. This may have partly been due to the jumping around which goes on (as in Corelli's) but was not helped by the fact that the story didn't engage me. By the end I didn't really care what happened and half way through I contemplated giving up. It had it's plus sides - there were some hilariously sarcastic moments and a handful of the characters were likeable. I'll give the other two books in the set a chance but am not going to rush to read them yet. One sentence summary: A fight in Spain offers an insight into the corruption of the army and government.
—Becky
This book, along with the other two in the series (Senor Vivo and the Coca Lords and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman) are what I like to call my 'sick books' - they're the books that I always read when I'm home sick from work - they're always entertaining, but since I've read them so many times, I don't have to strain my ill brain trying to follow them. Probably I've read these three books more than any others for that very reason.This one in particular is actually not the first one I read - big mistake! Read them in order. Some of the stuff that gets set up in this one doesn't really get followed up in the other two (like the romance between Remedios and the Conde Pompeyo Xavier Extremador, which gets one chapter shoe-horned into the the 3rd book). And I can certainly understand how some people might take issue with his portrayal of women - there are an awful lot of whores in these stories, after all. But still, I love them and would recommend them to anyone.
—Amy
This is the first of de Bernieres' Latin American trilogy, set in a fictional South American country, heavily resembling Colombia (but with elements from many other Latin American countries as well). The plot follows multiple story lines and protagonists, including several villagers in the town of Chiriguaná, who are terrorized by corrupt militia, and the selfishness of the local landowners, and eventually decide to fight back. Other parts of the story show the terrible corruption of the military, with thousands of ordinary citizens of the country disappearing without a trace, being tortured and killed in the hunt for dissidents and communists. The story mixes horribly graphic descriptions of violence, rape, torture and death with humour, colourful descriptions and magical realism. During the course of events, the village of Chiriguaná is suddenly overrun with huge amounts of black cats who grow to be the size of panthers. There's even occasions where donkeys and women give birth to black kittens. It's a wonderfully written book, but not exactly an easy read, and it took me longer to get through than I had expected, simply because the subject matter was both wonderful and horrible, and while fictionalized, clearly based on real events that have taken place in South and Latin America in the last half a century. I was planning on reading the trilogy in one go, but felt I had to space out my reading more after finishing this one. Can absolutely be recommended, but is not for the squeamish or faint of heart.
—Malin
