Octavio's Journey by Miguel Bonnefoy (Book Review)

Octavio's Journey
By Miguel Bonnefoy
Translated from the French by Emily Boyce
Published by Gallic Books, 2017
Print: $14.95
Ebook: $7.99

Don Octavio has had to struggle his whole life with a dark secret. No, he didn't murder anyone. He didn't sleep with his sister. He didn't ruin anybody's life.

No, Don Octavio is illiterate. It is the secret shame that has shaped his life. He doesn't make close friends. He keeps to himself for fear of someone finding out he can't read or write. The only trips he makes to town are those to get essentials like food. He lives a lonely, solitary life in a shabby house on a Venezuelan hillside above the town of San Pablo de Limon.

Concealing his illiteracy leads to other complications. Octavio has a deep scar on his hand because whenever he is required to sign documents, he slices his hand open and feigns that he can't sign his name because of injury. A visiting doctor writes a prescription for Octavio to get some medicine and has to write it on Octavio's table because of course Octavio has no paper. He then has to pick up the entire table and carry it to town to the pharmacist. Of course, by that time, the writing has worn off the table and he isn't able to get his medicine.

Octavio would have probably lived his whole life and died never learning to read or write until an Obi-Wan like woman named Venezuela comes into his life. She makes it her mission to teach him to read and write and open his mind to a much larger world. Unfortunately, Octavio's side job as a henchman to a local burglar might bring it all crashing down.

This little book is covered in praise from French literary critics and also includes the inevitable "in the vein of Garcia Marquez" blurb which to me makes it already suspect. I'm not a fan of the "If you're a fan of (insert famous author here), then you'll love (insert current author here). To me, when someone mentions Marquez, my first thoughts are "magical realism" and "South America".

Bonnefoy does a good job of painting Octavio's world and you really get a feel for the town of San Pablo and the environment. Bonnefoy isn't quite as successful with the "realism" in "magical realism". I haven't read a lot of Marquez but to me, he would write somewhat realistically and then just have these brief moments of fantasy peppered throughout the book. Bonnefoy's approach is to start off realistic in this novel but as it goes along it becomes more and more surreal and by the end it has devolved into total fantasy.

That's where I got lost. Bonnefoy was doing such a good job at sketching the characters and the town and I was really enjoying it and wanted to recommend this book. But when the plot became more allegorical and symbolic it just seemed like an anti-matter black hole reversal of the book's first half. It would be kinda like looking at a painting that starts off photo realistic on the left side and as your eye moved to the right it became more and more abstract and then at its right edge was just blank canvas. To me, Bonnefoy should have decided to do one or the other, a totally realistic novel, or conjured up a complete fantasy. The contrast between the two halves off this novel just didn't work for me. But I guess, in his defense, this IS his first novel, so maybe he will get better. I doubt I try his next work though.

My Grade: D