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    Quesadillas
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    Quesadillas
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    Quesadillas
    Ebook163 pages1 hour

    Quesadillas

    By Juan Pablo Villalobos

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    While his father preaches Hellenic virtues and practises the art of the insult, Orestes' mother prepares hundreds of quesadillas for Orestes and the rest of their brood: Aristotle, Archilochus, Callimachus, Electra, Castor and Pollux. She insists they are middle class, but Orestes is not convinced. And after another fraudulent election and the disappearance of his younger brothers, he heads off on an adventure. Orestes meets a procession of pilgrims, a stoner uncle called Pink Floyd and a beguiling politician who teaches him how to lie, and he learns some valuable lessons about families, truth and bovine artificial insemination. With Quesadillas, Juan Pablo Villalobos serves up a wild banquet. Anything goes in this madcap Mexican satire of politics, big families and what it means to be middle-class.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnd Other Stories
    Release dateSep 1, 2013
    ISBN9781908276230
    Unavailable
    Quesadillas
    Author

    Juan Pablo Villalobos

    Juan Pablo Villalobos was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1973. He studied marketing and Spanish literature. He has researched such diverse topics as the influence of the avant-garde on the work of César Aira and the flexibility of pipelines for electrical installations. He is the author of books including Down the Rabbit Hole and Quesadillas. He lives in Barcelona, Spain.

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    Reviews for Quesadillas

    3.5/5

    48 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      "Everyone wants normal quesadillas." This little novel was hilarious and heartbreaking. Set in Mexico, it's an exploration of deep poverty told with a wry voice and a generous portion of magical realism. Orestes (Oreo) and his siblings, all named after Greek mythological beings, live with their parents in "a shoebox" on the outskirts of a nothing town. They subsist largely on quesadillas, family arguments, and a tenuous relationship with reality. When a wealthy man builds a mansion next door, the pretend twins Castor and Pollux disappear, and Oreo sets off with his eldest brother to find them. Epic adventures ensue, delightfully told in less than 200 pages.
    • 3/5
      A novel that wanders, has no focus, and ends strangely as though a miracle was needed to tie it together. But the boy's smart-assed voice struggling for enough quesadillas--enough of everything--keep you going. Also the characters: mother, father, siblings, Polish neighbors, mop-haired cop, athe cows, and the spaceship aliens; and the down home life in small village Mexico; and, of course, the political struggles. Worth a read; just enjoy and don't expect a great work of art.
    • 3/5
      Some chapters were brilliant, some as dull as stream-of-consciousness can be. There are madcap components which reminded me of Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins. Didn't love that one either. And some of it was so oddly crude that I doubt I'll bother wasting any more typing effort describing this wildly inconsistent work.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this quick little angry rant. Juan Pablo Villalobos is brilliant, witty, and dark. Quesadillas is a novella taking place in a small town in Mexico, featuring a 13-year-old boy that feels very much like the author's young self. This may be due in large part to the fact that the novel is supposed to be written by the boy, but 20'ish years later. Consequently, the narrator has the vocabulary and awareness of someone in their 30s, but the telling of the story itself has the maturity of a teen.It's fun, funny (laugh-out-loud funny), smart, dark, and thought provoking. While poking at his own country of origin, Villalobos also opens the window into the inner-workings, thought processes, and difficulties of the poor/middle-class-poor of Mexico's rural communities.Villalobos plays around with the magical realism that his country is known for, while still keeping his head above waters with a psychological smirk on his face. It was a pleasure reading Quesadillas.Definitely recommend, but with the "warning" that the narrator is dark and crass. Very crass. But funny. FOUR of five stars.
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars. Absurd. Hilarious. Absurd and hilarious.
    • 3/5
      This novel explores poverty and corruption in Mexico with humorous dialogue and absurdist plot elements. The former is quite successful while the latter often seems misplaced. Villalobos successfully employs his sharp wit and a strong sense for irony to ridicule Mexican poverty and political corruption. The narrator, Orestes, remembers events from his childhood and little escapes his keen sense of outrage. The church has “priests (who) follow their creed of misery and arrogance.” Rebels are “people (who) want to die and they don’t know how. They’re trying to die of hunger, but that takes ages—that’s why they like war so much.” The poor resign themselves to despair and viewing poverty as a zero-sum game—finding the mysteriously misplaced twins is curiously not a priority for anyone and mainly means that there will be more food for the remaining children. Orestes’ father rails against government corruption while teaching citizenship, while his mother is resigned to their fate, making due by altering the size of the quesadillas she chronically feeds the family. The wealthy neighbor is opportunistic and exploitative. He makes a good living by inseminating cows, builds an ostentatious house and eventually succeeds at leveling Orestes’ family home to make room for an upscale subdivision called “Olympic Heights.”Villalobos uses elements of magical realism with mixed success. Alien abduction may account for the loss of the twins; a magic button can both make things cease to function and can build a dream house; and the twins return as superheroes. Although interesting to read, these plot elements don’t seem to add much to the main themes of the novel.