Reading Journal — Pandora in the Congo
Pandora in the Congo first pinged my radar when I caught a capsule review in the New York Times. I had been reading Bolano at the time, and I think the fact that Pandora was also pegged as a playful, postmodern Spanish language novel, made it stick in my mind. It was at least a year later, when I saw Pinol’s book on The Daily Beast’s end-of-decade The Best Books You Missed list that I finally pulled the trigger.
Telling the story of a young British writer who gets himself hopelessly enmeshed in criminal proceedings surrounding Her Majesty’s colonial interests in Africa, Pandora in the Congo layers fictions within fictions in a way rarely ever attempted. The novel itself matched all my preconceptions — Pinol both venerates and critiques the rich generic works of the early 20th century. He does the critical legwork of connecting genre with the dominant ideology without ever making it feel academic or boring.
The trouble I had was in the second half of the novel when it came time to start winding down his novel-within-a-novel and draw it back into the overarching narrative. Pinol loses some steam while drawing his threads together and bringing the whole operation to a conclusion. The day was saved for me, however, by a witty, tongue-in-cheek finale. In retrospect, it’s the kind of maneuver that should have been incredibly obvious based solely on the preceding 400 pages. But it’s too Pinol credit that he takes his literary sleight of hand all the way to its conclusion.
Final score: 3 out of 5
