Where does one begin? The sweeping scale of Where Tigers Are At Home is crushing to behold. But wait, I don't want to lose my focus. The experience was mine, why this was a victory for me, jon faith. I haven't felt this geyser of love for a book in a while. It wasn't a keen appreciation or anything sophisticated or technical. It simply was a joy, the way that Mason and Dixon and Three Trapped Tigers glowed in my 20s. I've noticed that I am drawn to the reviews of books which I love or harbor a certain desire towards. Within this tangle of the personal, there is an amazing novel. One which unfortunately pulls up lame as it ignores its three "contemporary" plotlines in deference to the nominal biography of 17th Century polymath Athanasius Kircher. J.M. Blas De Robles handles the situation with verve, keeping a deep control for the tone of his time period, much as John Banville accomplishes in his Kepler and Doktor Copernicus. Yet somehow the novel suffers. Too much of the other narrative arcs are left unresolved. The plot devices employed are themselves unsatisfactory, but alas. I was adrift in bliss for 500 pages.

P.S. But what does it all mean? No, for once I'm not waxing existential, I'm referring to the novel. For starters, Brazil is a vast nation, populated by immense numbers of the poor. Its interior is also a primordial wilderness where tribes may wander, yet contmainated by our decadence. Officials are often brutal and corrupt. Drugs can be transportive. Or they can just fuck up your life. Oh and Queen Christina of Sweden did some wonky things 350 years ago.

A book as large and fascinating as life itself.

Generally i am a pretty easy reviewer, but this book got under my skin. It is a trashy novel, which is totally ok and wonderful, its a sexy adventure story, but every other page there is some absolutely unfounded reference to a piece of literature or art or philosophy which is trying to make this trashy kinda great thing a bit classier and really it just makes it unreadable and terrible instead. Its just too contrived.

Entertaining enough book, with tales of adventure, death, erudition and sex that take place in modern-day Brazil. The stories are interspersed with entries from what appears to be an old biography of a Jesuit priest.

Normally I go in for the Borges/Eco type of thing but I have to admit in this case it didn't fully click for me. Maybe I just missed something or didn't fully appreciate the end. While some absurdity is par for the course, I feel that the last-minute attempt to tie all the ends together felt like it came up a bit short.

Additionally, while the characters were fairly well drawn, there was little development, and the characters as they were seemed very stereotypical to me. The female characters in particular, although they got their fair share of the spotlight, seemed constantly sexualized and/or objectified. Loredana was probably the only female character that seemed to have a little more depth. I enjoyed her parts and wish she had been given a bit more time in the book.

Overall it was a quick read and a good airplane book, but I'm not sure I would have read all 800+ pages if I had known exactly what to expect.

A clunky yet entertaining yarn.
Interesting philosophical discussion peppered with sex, drugs, and colonialism.
I get the feeling the author was trying to do too much. Too much shifting in the POV ultimately leaves this brick feeling shallow.
Read Eco instead.

Een vlot boek om te lezen maar helaas niet zo fantastisch als de achterflap doet vermoeden. Vrij chaotisch verhaal, maar kan wel nog relatief boeien.