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    Down the Rabbit Hole: A Novel
    Down the Rabbit Hole: A Novel
    Down the Rabbit Hole: A Novel
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    Down the Rabbit Hole: A Novel

    By Juan Pablo Villalobos

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    "A brief and majestic debut." —Matías Néspolo, El Mundo

    Tochtli lives in a palace. He loves hats, samurai, guillotines, and dictionaries, and what he wants more than anything right now is a new pet for his private zoo: a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia. But Tochtli is a child whose father is a drug baron on the verge of taking over a powerful cartel, and Tochtli is growing up in a luxury hideout that he shares with hit men, prostitutes, dealers, servants, and the odd corrupt politician or two. Long-listed for The Guardian First Book Award, Down the Rabbit Hole, a masterful and darkly comic first novel, is the chronicle of a delirious journey to grant a child's wish.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateOct 2, 2012
    ISBN9780374709037
    Down the Rabbit Hole: A Novel
    Author

    Juan Pablo Villalobos

    Juan Pablo Villalobos nació en México en 1973 y vive en Barcelona desde 2003. En Anagrama ha publicado todas sus novelas, traducidas en más de quince países: Fiesta en la madriguera: «Divertida, convincente, asombrosa» (Ali Smith); «Una estupenda fábula de final cruelmente feliz que se lee como una novela iniciática carbonatada» (Laura Fernández, El Mundo); Si viviéramos en un lugar normal: «Una obra que juega con las nociones del realismo mágico. Un estilo poco convencional y lacónico que impresiona y define a Villalobos como un escritor excepcional» (Lucy Popescu, The Independent); Te vendo un perro: «Uno de los libros más ingeniosos, juguetones y disfrutables que se han publicado en español en mucho tiempo» (Alberto Manguel); No voy a pedirle a nadie que me crea (Premio Herralde de Novela 2016 y llevada al cine por Fernando Frías de la Parra): «La inteligencia del autor se impone… Una valiosísima propuesta literaria» (Francisco Solano, El País); La invasión del pueblo del espíritu: «Muy divertida, ágil como un paseante feliz, una celebración de la amistad, de la esperanza» (Nadal Suau, El Mundo); Peluquería y letras: «Una novela sobre la épica doméstica, sobre los gestos banales que se van engarzando unos a otros para acabar componiendo un intenso cuadro familiar, personalísimo, repleto de escenas disparatadas, cuando no surrealistas» (Ricardo Baixeras, El Periódico); «Como si Buster Keaton por fin se animara a esbozar una sonrisa. Una novela sin conflicto, sobre la felicidad» (Daniel Fermín, Zenda) y El pasado anda atrás de nosotros. También ha publicado el libro de no ficción Yo tuve un sueño: «Una crónica desoladora de las migraciones centroamericanas a USA... Sobresaliente» (Luisgé Martín).

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    Reviews for Down the Rabbit Hole

    3.5/5

    116 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Rating: 4* of fiveThe Book Description: “A brief and majestic debut.” —Matías Néspolo,  El MundoTochtli lives in a palace. He loves hats, samurai, guillotines, and dictionaries, and what he wants more than anything right now is a new pet for his private zoo: a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia. But Tochtli is a child whose father is a drug baron on the verge of taking over a powerful cartel, and Tochtli is growing up in a luxury hideout that he shares with hit men, prostitutes, dealers, servants, and the odd corrupt politician or two. Long-listed for The Guardian First Book Award, Down the Rabbit Hole, a masterful and darkly comic first novel, is the chronicle of a delirious journey to grant a child’s wish. My Review: First, I must get this off my chest: THIS IS NOT A NOVEL. At ~35,000 words, it could be called a novella, a work of 15,000 to 40,000 words (definitions vary on this point, but ALL definitions include 30,000-40,000 words in them and this is that length) that features fewer conflicts than a full novel and more complex ones than a short story. I don't think it's a novella because it's a first-person story and features only one fully developed character, Tochtli (“Rabbit” in Nahuatl, relax we'll get there). It's a récit , a form of narrative that has a simple through line, is told from one PoV and quite often in first-person present and past, and offers little in the way of contextualization, of “world-building,” as it's all in the narrator's PoV. I hate the publisher and the trade folk yip-yapping NOVELNOVELNOVEL about a 70-page (generous margins, several blank pages in the text) so as to get over the reading public's aversion to “lesser” forms. How about we review the piece as it is, and urge the reading public to read it without misleading them? Someone buying a novel expects that it will do what novels do, really explore one or two conflicts with results and resultant changes in characters' lives. Not happenin' here.Well, okay, I'm all shouted out now.Terrific story, this one of a drug king's kid and the many oddities paranoia and isolation have allowed to blossom in him. The names, all taken from Mexico's major native tongue of Nahuatl (the Aztecs spoke it), are all of animals...the narrator's name means Rabbit, his father's name means Rattlesnake, his tutor's name means Deer, and on. They're all like gang nicknames, playing on the culture of nicknames that describe some major thing about a person. Rattlesnake? How can you not perceive a drug lord as a cold-blooded, dangerous, venomous critter? Rabbit? Scared, small, needs to be hidden away—suits our narrator's life to a T.Translator Rosalind Harvey has done a marvelous, if British, job of rendering a precocious kid's usages and crotchets into spottily adult language. I haven't read the original Spanish, so I don't know how faithfully she's reproduced Villalobos's original, but I suspect quite well. The language has that certain “feel” that good translations do, a kind of smoothness and polished gleam that speak of quality made from quality. That Tochtli is an odd kid is to be expected, that he uses (frequently!) words he's just learning is to be expected, and since those words...sordid, pathetic, devastating...are a little above his actual grasp, the author's use of them in the kid's mouth makes several very trenchant points.Yolcaut (Rattlesnake) watched the news with me and when it was over he said some enigmatic things to me, First he said:“Ah, they suicided her.”And then, when he'd stopped laughing:“Think the worst and you'll be right.”Sometimes Yolcaut speaks in enigmatic and mysterious sentences. When he does that it's pointless to ask him what he means, because he never tells me. He wants me to solve the enigma.Before I went to sleep I looked up the word prestige in the dictionary. I learned that prestige is about people having a good idea about you, and thinking you're the best. In that case you have prestige. Pathetic.(p21, American softcover edition)It's all part of building the reader's awareness of the twisted, strange, uncomfortably exaggerated natural parental protection of our kids. Other details include Tochtli's always painful stomach cramps that the doctor can't find a cause for, Tochtli's obsessive passions for things like being a Japanese samurai who's mute and therefore enigmatic (!), his endless list-making. The kid would've been strange no matter what, but Yolcaut (Nahuatl has no dipthongs, so say each letter as if it were a Spanish vowel or a Basque consonant) being what and who he is has made the problems giant-sized.It's a disquieting little thing, and it's quite darkly amusing, and it's—Praise the Muses!—it's original. It's balm for a weary-of-~meh~ reader's soul. You'll love it, or you'll hate it, but you won't walk away wondering what it was that you just read.
    • 4/5
      This novella, which was longlisted for this year's Guardian First Book Award, is narrated by Tochtli, an 8 year old boy whose father Yolcaut is a ruthless Mexican drug lord who resides in a heavily guarded mountain hideout. The boy is similarly isolated, as he does not know his mother and has only met a dozen or so people, nearly all of whom work for or with his father. Other than his father, his closest companions are his teacher, Mazatzin, who provides an alternative view of manhood and morality to his paranoid and ruthless father, and the books that keep him occupied and supplement his advanced vocabulary.The hideout is filled with exotic animals, but Tochtli wants a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia more than anything else in the world. Yolcaut eventually gives in to his son's demands, and he takes Tochtli to Monrovia, along with his teacher, where they assume false identities and employ a local guide to hunt down the elusive and rare animal.Down the Rabbit Hole was a mildly interesting read, which held my interest for its 70 pages, but would have been overly tiresome and repetitive had it been much longer, primarily due to Tochtli's repeated use of vocabulary words such as sordid, disastrous and pathetic. This book isn't worth anything close to the £10 I spent on it, so I'd recommend borrowing it if you want to read it.
    • 4/5
      A new Holden Caulfield at 7 years, son of a small-time Mexican drug lord, living in the lightly populated (14 gunsels) hideaway. Getting tutored about the life and learning big dictionary words: orifice-like the kind bullets make, pathetic-like his life.
    • 5/5
      I loved this novella so, so much, and fought the urge to re-read it as soon as I finished (because I had too many other books to complete). The narrative, as channeled through the young son of a drug baron who’s cooped up in a large mansion in Mexico, is playful and chuckle-inducing. I’m pretty amazed that this voice—childish, precocious, inadvertently funny—came through so well in the translation from Spanish, so kudos to the translator. This young boy loves to collect hats, uses big words he gets from the dictionary (endearingly and incorrectly), and longs for a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus to add to his collection of animals--in a world that's feels quirky, surreal,and menacing. On the edges of his matter-of-fact narration on things like whether, among his handful of acquaintances, he can count the ones that died; the macabre game he plays with his dad in guessing how many bullets it takes to kill people; and news accounts of severed heads and body parts, we see glimpses of the Mexican drug war playing out in a landscape that’s corrupt and violent. While it seems like this is the only world that the isolated boy knows, he seems also to sense that something is not quite right, and this makes the story all the more heartbreaking.

      I always find it harder to write a review of the books that I’m so enamored with—it just feels like I’d never be able to truly capture how tremendous the book is and why it struck a chord. And this is the case with Down the Rabbit Hole. I’m eagerly awaiting Villalobos’ next work.
    • 3/5
      Life with a South American drug baron through the all seeing but not all comprehending eyes of his 10 year-old son.I think I myself am too naive to be able to join the dots properly - in the end the truth of the events described remained obscure.
    • 4/5
      I usually don't rate short novellas 4 stars, but this is so cleverly done and the language so matter of fact yet poignant all the same. A young boy whose father is a drug lord is the narrator of this book, and the way he accepts all facets of his strange life is at time humorous and at time appalling. He talks of corpses, guns, bullets, gangs, cocaine and all the things he sees living with his father. It is rather fascinating, a mix of precociousness and naivete. Yet the boy has stomach troubles which the doctor thinks is psychosomatic so obviously the boy does feel stress from his strange existence, though I am not sure that he considers it strange since he has known no other life. Anyway this is the first short novel that I actually consider rather complete.
    • 4/5
      There's no way I could believe that the narrator of this book was a 7 year old boy, even a precocious one. He could be a genius, which could as well be born to a Mexican drug lord as to anyone else, but still, beyond credulity. However the way Villalobos talks about morality through this boy's eyes is genius. Since his father is so very rich the boy lives in a secluded palace where he knows only about 14 people - not counting corpses, which he doesn't think he should count. Little Tochtli (Rabbit) knows lots about corpses since they seem to be one of his father's most important products. In fact he and his father play a little verbal game about how many bullets and where should they be placed in order to make a corpse. Being macho is the number one value of Tochtli and his father's little gang, the opposite of which is to be a faggot who cries when he is made into a corpse. Tochtli tries very hard not to be a faggot and usually succeeds. Tochtli's father, the king, doesn't discipline him but rather buys him presents to persuade correct behavior. The next present Tochtli wants is a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus, and he absolutely thinks he can acquire this prize. The essence of Down the Rabbit Hole is the learning of morality, and this is expressed both lightly and with gut wrenching force. I've always said that you should teach your children about sex from the earliest age possible because their minds are open and they can accept all ideas without horror, shame or disgust if presented properly. Tochtli accepts his lessons in macho consciously, but, the book wonders, is there a part of humanity that has empathy - that rejects the idea of casual murder or than cannot accept such ideas without harm to the person? This book is a very quick read with very deep impact.
    • 3/5
      This is the story of a young boy who is the son of the leader of a Mexican gang, and how he views the world around him. He lives in a "palace" filled with money in different currencies, guns from all over the world, jewels and diamonds of kings and queens, and their very own safari. The boy is surround by a slew of random "family members". They do various things around the palace such as cooking, cleaning, and being his tutor.
      The story is from the boy's POV. He is smart but clearly isolated from the rest of the world. You will be left with questions.
    • 4/5
      I was reading an article about the translation of foreign language book into English and who were the best translators. This book was mentioned as Rosalind Harvey translation was considered to be one of the best.The book is really a novella and it is an interesting look into the literature of South America though the author is Mexican the this story take place In Honduras. It is a tale of a boy obsessions for hats, samurai, guillotines, dictionaries and pygmy hippopotamus. His father, who is a drug dealer, both ignores him and loves him. A strange family dynamic is going on in this book. I enjoyed it greatly.

    Book preview

    Down the Rabbit Hole - Juan Pablo Villalobos

    DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

    ONE

    Some people say I’m precocious. They say it mainly because they think I know difficult words for a little boy. Some of the difficult words I know are: sordid, disastrous, immaculate, pathetic, and devastating. There aren’t really that many people who say I’m precocious. The problem is I don’t know that many people. I know maybe thirteen or fourteen people, and four of them say I’m precocious. They say I look older. Or the other way around: that I’m too little to know words like that. Or back-to-front and the other way around, sometimes people think I’m a dwarf. But I don’t think I’m precocious. What happens is I have a trick, like magicians who pull rabbits out of hats, except I pull words out of the dictionary. Every night before I go to sleep I read the dictionary. My memory, which is really good, practically devastating, does the rest. Yolcaut doesn’t think I’m precocious either. He says I’m a genius, he tells me:

    Tochtli, you’re a genius, you little bastard.

    And he strokes my head with his fingers covered in gold-and-diamond rings.

    Anyway, more people say I’m odd: seven. And just because I really like hats and always wear one. Wearing a hat is a good habit immaculate people have. In the sky there are pigeons doing their business. If you don’t wear a hat you end up with a dirty head. Pigeons have no shame. They do their dirty business in front of everyone, while they’re flying. They could easily do it hidden in the branches of a tree. Then we wouldn’t have to spend the whole time looking at the sky and worrying about our heads. But hats, if they’re good hats, can also be used to make you look distinguished. That is, hats are like the crowns of kings. If you’re not a king you can wear a hat to be distinguished. And if you’re not a king and you don’t wear a hat you end up being a nobody.

    I don’t think I’m odd for wearing a hat. And oddness is related to ugliness, like Cinteotl says. What I definitely am is macho. For example: I don’t cry all the time because I don’t have a mum. If you don’t have a mum you’re supposed to cry a lot, gallons of tears, two or three gallons a day. But I don’t cry, because people who cry are faggots. When I’m sad Yolcaut tells me not to cry, he says:

    Chin up, Tochtli, take it like a man.

    Yolcaut is my daddy, but he doesn’t like it when I call him Daddy. He says we’re the best and most macho gang for at least eight kilometers. Yolcaut is a realist and that’s why he doesn’t say we’re the best gang in the universe or the best gang for 8,000 kilometers. Realists are people who think reality isn’t how you think it is. Yolcaut told me that. Reality is like this and that’s it. Tough luck. The realist’s favorite saying is you have to be realistic.

    I think we really are a very good gang. I have proof. Gangs are all about solidarity. So solidarity means that, because I like hats, Yolcaut buys me hats, lots of hats, so many that I have a collection of hats from all over the world and from all the different periods of the world. Although now more than new hats what I want is a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus. I’ve already written it down on the list of things I want and given it to Miztli. That’s how we always do it, because I don’t go out much, so Miztli buys me all the things I want on orders from Yolcaut. And since Miztli has a really bad memory I have to write lists for him. But you can’t buy a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus that easily, in a pet shop. The biggest thing they sell in a pet shop is a dog. But who wants a dog? No one wants a dog. It’s so hard to get a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus that it might be the only way to do it is by going to catch one in Liberia. That’s why my tummy is hurting so much. Actually my tummy always hurts, but recently I’ve been getting cramps more often.

    I think at the moment my life is a little bit sordid. Or pathetic.

    *   *   *

    I nearly always get on well with Mazatzin. He only annoys me when he’s strict and makes me stick to our study plan rigidly. Mazatzin, by the way, doesn’t call me Tochtli. He calls me Usagi, which is my name in Japanese, because he loves everything from the empire of Japan. What I really like about the empire of Japan are the samurai films. I’ve seen some of them so many times I know them off by heart. When I watch them I go on ahead and say the samurai’s conversations out loud before they do. And I never get it wrong. That’s because of my memory, which really is almost devastating. One of the films is called Twilight of the Samurai and it’s about an old samurai who teaches the way of the samurai to a little boy. There’s one bit where he makes the boy stay still and mute for days and days. He says to him: The guardian is stealthy and knows how to wait. Patience is his best weapon, like the crane who does not know despair. The weak are known by their movement. The strong by their stillness. Look at the devastating sword that knows not fear. Look at the wind. Look at your eyelashes. Close your eyes and look at your eyelashes. It’s not just this film I know off by heart, I know lots more,

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