Down The Rabbit Hole By Juan Pablo Villalobos

ISBN: 978-1908276001

Published By And Other Stories

Tochtli lives with his powerful drug baron father in a luxurious and heavily guarded palace. His father is, not unreasonably, paranoid about security and so Tochtli lives in an isolated world. His view of this strange and violent world is very matter of fact. He has a disturbing understanding of how many bullets it takes to “make a corpse” depending on which body part is hit.  This knowledge combined with a child’s thought process can make uncomfortable reading. Tochtli is charming in his own way though, having his own obsessions which we all have when we are young. His include hats, samurai swords  and Liberian Pygmy Hippopotamuses.   To try and help his young son’s obvious loneliness his father takes him to Liberia to capture two of the hippos.

The story has a very claustrophobic feeling to it, and I was constantly left worrying what would happen him has he grew older. There are some similarities to Room where a young boy’s understanding of the world is distorted by his limited experience of it.  The writing is fantastic, and by inference so it the translation, at once capturing an innocence sullied by knowledge no child should ever have.

This is a great read and I can see this may well be one of the best reads of 2012.