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patchworkbunny's review
4.0
El Matadero is reputed to be one of the most studied texts in Spanish speaking South America. It's a fairly short story, only 32 pages once translated and details the events of a day at a Matadero, one the public slaughterhouses common in 19th century Argentina. The story paints a vivid picture of the culture at the time and the manic pace within the Matadero as well as having a political aspect.
The real gem of this book is the accompanying appendixes and glossary which really hit home the reality of that political message. I haven't really had much exposure to Argentinian history and didn't know much more about the country than gauchos and a passion for football and polo. Like many countries, they have travelled a rocky path to get to where they are now, including a civil war between Unitarians and Federalists and a dictator running the country; Juan Manuel de Rosa. This book can describe the history much more eloquently than me, but the story of The Slaughteryard favours the Unitarians, something that would have got Echeverria into deep water if it had been discovered.
The Accounts by Other Travellers includes passages from various travellers within the country between 1818 and 1863, including Charles Darwin. These accounts all describe the Mataderos from an outsider's point of view.
I would really recommend it to anyone studying Spanish as a second language as it also contains the original text as well as a selection of poems. How often do you get both in one edition?
A really interesting little book.
The real gem of this book is the accompanying appendixes and glossary which really hit home the reality of that political message. I haven't really had much exposure to Argentinian history and didn't know much more about the country than gauchos and a passion for football and polo. Like many countries, they have travelled a rocky path to get to where they are now, including a civil war between Unitarians and Federalists and a dictator running the country; Juan Manuel de Rosa. This book can describe the history much more eloquently than me, but the story of The Slaughteryard favours the Unitarians, something that would have got Echeverria into deep water if it had been discovered.
The Accounts by Other Travellers includes passages from various travellers within the country between 1818 and 1863, including Charles Darwin. These accounts all describe the Mataderos from an outsider's point of view.
I would really recommend it to anyone studying Spanish as a second language as it also contains the original text as well as a selection of poems. How often do you get both in one edition?
A really interesting little book.
charleslambert's review
5.0
Assuming you know nothing of the work of the nineteenth century Argentine writer Esteban Echeverria, as I knew nothing, you can approach this book, one of the Friday Project’s Library of Lost Books, in two ways. The first way is to cut to the chase and read the beating and rather bloody heart of it, the long short story, entitled The Slaughteryard, a vivid, in many ways chilling, account of a cattle butchering and its disturbing aftermath in one of the four slaughter yards of Buenos Aires during the first decades of the nineteenth century. It’s a powerful, and memorable, tale, packed with information and colour, observation and, above all, political indictment. Translated with enormous vigour by erstwhile Borges collaborator and translator, Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, and Susan Ashe, it provides an insight into a world that’s both recognisably modern and tantalisingly ‘other’, which is just what you’d expect from a classic ‘lost book’.
If you stop at the story, you’ll already have had value for money. If you decide to read the rest of the book as well, you’ll come away not only wiser, but also irresistibly entertained. It’s packed with gems: historical details about slaughtering methods, the use of the lasso, and, more worryingly, the mazorca (you’ll have to read the glossary to find out why this should be worrying, but Edward II might provide a hint), the practice known as the slippery dance, the other, less musical meaning of the violin y violon; and, underlying all this, the tragic oppression of one faction by another, in a Swiftian parody of political schism and reversal that, as these things tend to do, resulted in the deaths and torture of thousands. On top of this, you’ll have contemporary accounts of butchery in Buenos Aires by the famous, such as Darwin, and other less well-known travellers, such as a certain Major Alexander Gillespie, according to whom “negroes [...:] have generally a predilection for food very salt, and even tainted”.
The book as a whole, in other words, provides a framework that not only introduces and provides a context for the story, but that delights on its own terms. I recommend it.
If you stop at the story, you’ll already have had value for money. If you decide to read the rest of the book as well, you’ll come away not only wiser, but also irresistibly entertained. It’s packed with gems: historical details about slaughtering methods, the use of the lasso, and, more worryingly, the mazorca (you’ll have to read the glossary to find out why this should be worrying, but Edward II might provide a hint), the practice known as the slippery dance, the other, less musical meaning of the violin y violon; and, underlying all this, the tragic oppression of one faction by another, in a Swiftian parody of political schism and reversal that, as these things tend to do, resulted in the deaths and torture of thousands. On top of this, you’ll have contemporary accounts of butchery in Buenos Aires by the famous, such as Darwin, and other less well-known travellers, such as a certain Major Alexander Gillespie, according to whom “negroes [...:] have generally a predilection for food very salt, and even tainted”.
The book as a whole, in other words, provides a framework that not only introduces and provides a context for the story, but that delights on its own terms. I recommend it.
psabino's review against another edition
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
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