Scan barcode
A review by neilrcoulter
The Weight of All Things by Sandra Benítez
4.0
The Weight of All Things was a really interesting reading experience. For about the first half of the book, I was not especially taken with it. The excessive description (no noun is safe from being joined by at least one or two adjectives) felt like a kind of failed creative writing project, and the narrative was not flowing or drawing me in. But then somewhere around page 100, it become un-put-down-able and I wanted to race to the end. So either it took some time for Sandra Benítez to find her stride, or it took me some time to get into the flow and really invest in the characters. Either way, it’s a tremendous novel.
I confess that before I began reading The Weight of All Things, I knew little about the civil war in El Salvador, other than vague memories of news reports from my childhood, and U2’s song “Bullet the Blue Sky.” This novel, and a bit of extra reading I did online, have supplemented that sketchy knowledge I started with. The real-life story is, of course, very sad, and the book conveys that. But Benítez skillfully and beautifully weaves a fictional story into the real events to validate Rilke’s epigraph: “Life is heavier than the weight of all things.” That is, no weight of sorrow can entirely overwhelm life and continued hope.
The journey of protagonist Nicolás through the story is full of ups and downs, and there were many moments where I feared that terrible things were about to happen. But he is guided by la Virgen in miraculous ways. What I appreciate in Benítez’s storytelling is the way she makes religious faith a real option for life. In moments when Nicolás might have chosen to doubt or question, he simply holds onto faith, believing in what he has seen. The spiritual journey of his grandfather is shown with great subtlety, letting us fill in the spaces of whether he has come to share Nicolás’s confidence in la Virgen, or whether he is just allowing Nicolás to take the lead and enter manhood. (A couple of chapters from the grandfather’s point of view were a surprising and interesting shift in perspective.)
The story is rich with symbolism, and what I’m especially pondering is the idea of borders and boundaries. Life and faith for the Salvadoran villagers are not separate from the ground where they live, and moving from one place to another risks significant consequences. The climax of the story, along the banks of the Sumpul River that divides El Salvador and Honduras, highlights the border that Nicolás is learning to cross during his journey—the difficult move from boyhood to manhood. He needs to become more than just another person’s “pack mule,” and he demonstrates this growing wisdom in his final choice:
The Weight of All Things is a beautiful story. Benítez finds a way to show what the war meant to Salvadorans, but without being overwhelmed by the grittiest details. And at the end of it all, there is hope.
I confess that before I began reading The Weight of All Things, I knew little about the civil war in El Salvador, other than vague memories of news reports from my childhood, and U2’s song “Bullet the Blue Sky.” This novel, and a bit of extra reading I did online, have supplemented that sketchy knowledge I started with. The real-life story is, of course, very sad, and the book conveys that. But Benítez skillfully and beautifully weaves a fictional story into the real events to validate Rilke’s epigraph: “Life is heavier than the weight of all things.” That is, no weight of sorrow can entirely overwhelm life and continued hope.
The journey of protagonist Nicolás through the story is full of ups and downs, and there were many moments where I feared that terrible things were about to happen. But he is guided by la Virgen in miraculous ways. What I appreciate in Benítez’s storytelling is the way she makes religious faith a real option for life. In moments when Nicolás might have chosen to doubt or question, he simply holds onto faith, believing in what he has seen. The spiritual journey of his grandfather is shown with great subtlety, letting us fill in the spaces of whether he has come to share Nicolás’s confidence in la Virgen, or whether he is just allowing Nicolás to take the lead and enter manhood. (A couple of chapters from the grandfather’s point of view were a surprising and interesting shift in perspective.)
The story is rich with symbolism, and what I’m especially pondering is the idea of borders and boundaries. Life and faith for the Salvadoran villagers are not separate from the ground where they live, and moving from one place to another risks significant consequences. The climax of the story, along the banks of the Sumpul River that divides El Salvador and Honduras, highlights the border that Nicolás is learning to cross during his journey—the difficult move from boyhood to manhood. He needs to become more than just another person’s “pack mule,” and he demonstrates this growing wisdom in his final choice:
Nicolás pulled the weapon from Basilio’s hands. “I know what to do.” (234)What he does then is something fantastic that surprised me in the best way.
The Weight of All Things is a beautiful story. Benítez finds a way to show what the war meant to Salvadorans, but without being overwhelmed by the grittiest details. And at the end of it all, there is hope.