xlnzx's review against another edition
3.0
I found the book to be sad, but generally, anticlimactic. It took me nearly a month to read because I found it to have such a slow start. Part 2 of the book did start to pick up for me, especially learning about Antonio's past in Guatemala.
Part 2 really started to delve deeper into Antonio and Longoria's life stories, which I appreciated. It felt like there was finally some world building happening. I wish we had the chance to learn more about other characters in the book like Jose Juan and Antonio's friend that helps him deal with his dilemma. They seemed to be interesting characters, especially Jose Juan who was sticking by Antonio so fiercely.
I wholeheartedly understood where Antonio was coming from in his quest for revenge, and I can't say I blame him. I enjoyed seeing him fall deeper into this thirst. I found that once he got what he wanted, things started to happen so quickly. Which was odd as I thought the book was quite slow. I wish that the climax was more climactic, lol. It felt like so much was being built up, then it just kind of fizzled once Antonio got what he wanted.
I did enjoy how Tobar's prose quite a bit.
Part 2 really started to delve deeper into Antonio and Longoria's life stories, which I appreciated. It felt like there was finally some world building happening. I wish we had the chance to learn more about other characters in the book like Jose Juan and Antonio's friend that helps him deal with his dilemma. They seemed to be interesting characters, especially Jose Juan who was sticking by Antonio so fiercely.
I wholeheartedly understood where Antonio was coming from in his quest for revenge, and I can't say I blame him. I enjoyed seeing him fall deeper into this thirst. I found that once he got what he wanted, things started to happen so quickly. Which was odd as I thought the book was quite slow. I wish that the climax was more climactic, lol. It felt like so much was being built up, then it just kind of fizzled once Antonio got what he wanted.
I did enjoy how Tobar's prose quite a bit.
lilly_dav_reading's review against another edition
3.0
3.5
Set in the chaos that was LA after the Rodney King murder, is a story of two men who are very opposite: one a heartbroken and defeated intellectual and his enemy, a brainwashed ex militia who killed his wife and son.
They escape the war in Guatemala only to find themselves in another war between the authority and the people.
Detailing hardships both foreign and domestic and showing how violence can shape a society.
Set in the chaos that was LA after the Rodney King murder, is a story of two men who are very opposite: one a heartbroken and defeated intellectual and his enemy, a brainwashed ex militia who killed his wife and son.
They escape the war in Guatemala only to find themselves in another war between the authority and the people.
Detailing hardships both foreign and domestic and showing how violence can shape a society.
yeller's review against another edition
5.0
This novel, admittedly, draws on a lot of the political issues I am most interested in. You can clearly see Tobar's journalistic background throughout the novel, and it was very clever to frame the story around a tale of revenge. The writing style was wonderful, the dual timelines were pulled off beautifully, in my opinion. I can't wait to read the rest of his books.
I don't think the characters were as simplistic as some people are writing them off to be, and I thought the play between the PTSD of both the protagonist and antagonist was very interesting. I thought Tobar explored that well. I think it's a very poignant comment on race and immigration in Los Angeles. I really don't think the tale of revenge is quite as simplistic as critics call it, but that may have been from the benefit of reading it in a literature course.
I don't think the characters were as simplistic as some people are writing them off to be, and I thought the play between the PTSD of both the protagonist and antagonist was very interesting. I thought Tobar explored that well. I think it's a very poignant comment on race and immigration in Los Angeles. I really don't think the tale of revenge is quite as simplistic as critics call it, but that may have been from the benefit of reading it in a literature course.
knick_nat's review against another edition
2.0
2.5 Read this for a class and it’s pretty dated but it went with our lesson for the class. Probably wouldn’t have read it on my own though.
lacifaeria's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
I'm not typically a fan of revenge plots but this was really well done. This was really provocative, and at times, really uncomfortable, with some genuine terror woven in for good measure.
I love how the story was broken down into three parts, which began with the serendipitous reunion of Antonio and Guillermo before weaving into Antonio's romance and life with Elena and their protesting student days in Guatemala City. Because we meet Antonio as he and his friend are being evicted, and then tumble with them until they come to a stop in a makeshift encampment in L.A. as down-on-their-luck homeless people, it's hard to imagine the life beforehand that lead to that moment in MacArthur Park, where he recognizes the tattoo that changed everything. You knew this was leading to how Antonio remembered the tattooed soldier.
And Guillermo Longoria? Phew! Tobar truly created a loathesome character in this man.
Having the climax culminate during the LA Rodney King riots was near perfect for heightened suspense. A game of cat and mouse between a killer and the man he turned into a widower with the backdrop of looting and chaos. It was damned near cinematic. And I'm going to stop talking about Part III because I don't want to ruin the dramatic conclusion but it was truly satisfying.
While it was uncomfortably graphic at times, I feel like it was a really important snapshot into the political climate of Guatemala during this period of unrest. The chaos of both L.A. and Guatemala bookended this really sad but all too human love story of young lovers forced to grow up earlier than planned. Elena and Antonio's love story and tragedy stood on it's own and didn't just serve as the catalyst for the eventual revenge hunting plot which I appreciated and she was a complete and fully fleshed out character. And Antonio was just the softest person, hardened by responsibilities he wasn't ready for, compounded by a grief no one ever really is prepared for. Your heart breaks for him over and over again and you can't help but root for him in the third act.
All in all, it wasn't a *fun* read but it was a good read with a well-paced plot and incredibly interesting characters, including one you just kinda hate, no matter how much you pity him when you do. I can't really say anything else without needing a tag so I'll just say that it's worth a read, but make sure you fortify your heart first.
I love how the story was broken down into three parts, which began with the serendipitous reunion of Antonio and Guillermo before weaving into Antonio's romance and life with Elena and their protesting student days in Guatemala City. Because we meet Antonio as he and his friend are being evicted, and then tumble with them until they come to a stop in a makeshift encampment in L.A. as down-on-their-luck homeless people, it's hard to imagine the life beforehand that lead to that moment in MacArthur Park, where he recognizes the tattoo that changed everything.
Spoiler
When we cycle back to how Antonio met Elena, and are introduced to her as a person, it almost feels like a different person. The Antonio we first meet is broken and ashamed, his internal dialogue filled with questions about how his Elena would feel about him now. But the Antonio who met Elena was shy and sheepish, a bit of a literature nerd and full of that dopey adorableness of a swirling first love. Elena was a radical, or at least, a radical to him. She was young and passionate, fell in love with revolutionaries, and wanted to help move Guatemala into the future. He couldn't help but be enamored. His first gift to her, a gold-edged Spanish-Quinche dictionary, came with a small speech about people forgetting their culture and history but was also meant to impress her -- and it worked! He was sheltered and naïve -- but he loved books and reading and poetry. And Elena. Their love story is full of connections like that, their rapture and then the pervading sadness when reality seeped into all the cracks between them. Finding themselves pregnant and hiding out in a small town from the government introduced stressors that warped their relationship and watching their love morph into the aberration of how it started was painful. But when Elena, feeling somewhat empty, started investigating the high infant mortality rate of a neighboring village, things start getting off kilter and by the time they fought about the letter she sent, a sense of dread was crawling up the pages.And Guillermo Longoria? Phew! Tobar truly created a loathesome character in this man.
Spoiler
At every chance when he was confronted with a choice to make a better decision, he opted for glib dismissiveness or hyper-violence or brash arrogance. He was cruel and I could not figure out what Reginalda saw in him ever. When it went into his training days, you could almost see the human being in there that he used to be, but then you saw how being trained as a soldier started to wear this part of him away and the more atrocities he both witnessed and participated in, the easier it became to live devoid of emotions. He was a shell because he couldn't afford to not be. Some of his conflicted dialogue is really difficult to get through, because some of the memories Longoria has are just abhorrent. But you get a sense that he's this "tough" guy because he can't afford for that damn to break. The scene at his job where the old grandmother recognizes him from Guatemala and she starts screaming at him, "Maton! Where's my son!?" and he responds by slapping her so hard that he knocks her over and knocks out her tooth kept playing through his mind after it happened. You could tell he was grappling with his guilt that he buried inside. But ultimately, he used how weak the interaction made him feel as motivation for buying a gun for safety. Because that's what you do when you feel threatened if you have a hard time processing deep trauma and unresolved emotions when you're deeply embedded with toxic masculinity as a defense mechanism.Having the climax culminate during the LA Rodney King riots was near perfect for heightened suspense. A game of cat and mouse between a killer and the man he turned into a widower with the backdrop of looting and chaos. It was damned near cinematic. And I'm going to stop talking about Part III because I don't want to ruin the dramatic conclusion but it was truly satisfying.
While it was uncomfortably graphic at times
Spoiler
the Jaguars going to the Bernal home was just plain awful and the funeral processions of the neighboring towns really hurt to readAll in all, it wasn't a *fun* read but it was a good read with a well-paced plot and incredibly interesting characters, including one you just kinda hate, no matter how much you pity him when you do. I can't really say anything else without needing a tag so I'll just say that it's worth a read, but make sure you fortify your heart first.
Spoiler
And Elena would be proud of Antonio, but you knew she would be, right? Of course she would
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Body horror, Child death, Grief, Murder, Death, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, and War
melissabalick's review against another edition
4.0
This was a good but very predictable book. That's OK. There's no rule saying that everything has to be unpredictable. In fact, life is often predictable, especially if you're observant. Still, it put me off just a bit that as soon as Antonio, the protagonist, encountered Longoria, the titular tattooed soldier, while living in an LA that was in the middle of watching the trial of the coppers who beat Rodney King, I knew exactly how and when this book would end. Don't you?
I was also not exactly thrilled that Longoria is so thoroughly evil. He's has nothing to redeem him. However, I also acknowledge that this might be realistic. Tobar gave readers the opportunity to have some sympathy for the soldier, explaining how he had been kidnapped and forced into the army, but everything that followed served to explain that he still had a choice but chose ruthlessness. He was proud of his work; for instance, he still kept a picture of himself standing over a dead kid. He had been disgusted not to have been allowed to wear his uniform while doing his killing in Guatemala because it was sending the message that “these tasks were so despicable you couldn’t wear your uniform when you did them,” and he did not believe they were despicable. To him, by killing communists, he was creating order, neatness, and a masculine strength that he valued as good.
This kind of evil seems a bit cartoonish to me, but I suspect that is because it is hard for me to identify with it. Such evil does, in fact, both exist and flourish. I recently watched a documentary called Cash For Kids about the judge in Pennsylvania who had been sentencing kids to long prison terms in a facility where he had financial interest. For that reason, the scandal became known as the “Cash For Kids” scandal, but the judge’s interview in the documentary made it very clear that actually, he was not motivated by profit. He was motivated by something that I find to be even more disturbing: true belief that the smallest infractions ought to be punished with harsh sentences, that prison is good for children, that prisons in general are good and will shape a kid up. If Longoria had been motivated by profit, it would have been the very evil that the communists were advocating against. But his true belief in “might makes right” is harder for a leftist to understand, and I suspect that it's the major fundamental difference between a conservative and a liberal.
I loved the part told from the point of view of Antonio's wife Elena back in Guatemala, especially when she described the sexual misconduct of her fellow revolutionaries who were male. This is a problem I witness often in radical circles. One might think that radical activist men would be better behaved, but my experience shows that not to be the case. It takes a certain privilege to be an activist. One must believe that they know something that others should also know, and that they should be a part of creating the future reality. This same self-centeredness is what drives most sexual abusers to abuse, and I find that too many activist groups have male members whose presence causes activist spaces to be unsafe spaces for women. I'm glad a male author like Tobar observed and wrote about this phenomenon.
Overall, I'd say this is a quick read that's worth partaking in, as it covers such ills in our society as police violence, the refugee-like status of the homeless in the US, the US's shameful habit of giving military support and training to oppressive regimes abroad, and the struggles of immigrants. Yet it's short and you could read it in a few hours.
I was also not exactly thrilled that Longoria is so thoroughly evil. He's has nothing to redeem him. However, I also acknowledge that this might be realistic. Tobar gave readers the opportunity to have some sympathy for the soldier, explaining how he had been kidnapped and forced into the army, but everything that followed served to explain that he still had a choice but chose ruthlessness. He was proud of his work; for instance, he still kept a picture of himself standing over a dead kid. He had been disgusted not to have been allowed to wear his uniform while doing his killing in Guatemala because it was sending the message that “these tasks were so despicable you couldn’t wear your uniform when you did them,” and he did not believe they were despicable. To him, by killing communists, he was creating order, neatness, and a masculine strength that he valued as good.
This kind of evil seems a bit cartoonish to me, but I suspect that is because it is hard for me to identify with it. Such evil does, in fact, both exist and flourish. I recently watched a documentary called Cash For Kids about the judge in Pennsylvania who had been sentencing kids to long prison terms in a facility where he had financial interest. For that reason, the scandal became known as the “Cash For Kids” scandal, but the judge’s interview in the documentary made it very clear that actually, he was not motivated by profit. He was motivated by something that I find to be even more disturbing: true belief that the smallest infractions ought to be punished with harsh sentences, that prison is good for children, that prisons in general are good and will shape a kid up. If Longoria had been motivated by profit, it would have been the very evil that the communists were advocating against. But his true belief in “might makes right” is harder for a leftist to understand, and I suspect that it's the major fundamental difference between a conservative and a liberal.
I loved the part told from the point of view of Antonio's wife Elena back in Guatemala, especially when she described the sexual misconduct of her fellow revolutionaries who were male. This is a problem I witness often in radical circles. One might think that radical activist men would be better behaved, but my experience shows that not to be the case. It takes a certain privilege to be an activist. One must believe that they know something that others should also know, and that they should be a part of creating the future reality. This same self-centeredness is what drives most sexual abusers to abuse, and I find that too many activist groups have male members whose presence causes activist spaces to be unsafe spaces for women. I'm glad a male author like Tobar observed and wrote about this phenomenon.
Overall, I'd say this is a quick read that's worth partaking in, as it covers such ills in our society as police violence, the refugee-like status of the homeless in the US, the US's shameful habit of giving military support and training to oppressive regimes abroad, and the struggles of immigrants. Yet it's short and you could read it in a few hours.
lematt's review
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Gun violence, Death, War, and Violence
Moderate: Sexual violence
Minor: Classism
orangejenny's review against another edition
4.0
Utterly engrossing story, characters, and setting.
The perspective and point in time jump around quite a bit, but this is done remarkably fluidly. There are three main parts: the first in the present day, which alternates between Antonio and the soldier; the second in the past, mostly from the perspective of Antonio's wife, Elena; the third back in the present and again alternating between Antonio and the soldier. There's some overlap, especially between Antonio an the soldier as their lives begin to touch in LA, which is well done: as much repetition as is necessary to illuminate the characters' different experiences of the same event, but not so much that it feels forced. The day of Elena's death, fittingly, is re-told in its entirety through the eyes of each of the three main characters.
Since Elena's death is apparent from the beginning, I was pleasantly surprised that the middle section of the book is in her voice. It gives her more life than Antonio's memories can provide, and it adds to Antonio's own characterization. The soldier has less depth than Antonio and Elena and certainly isn't sympathetic, but he's at least plausible.
The perspective and point in time jump around quite a bit, but this is done remarkably fluidly. There are three main parts: the first in the present day, which alternates between Antonio and the soldier; the second in the past, mostly from the perspective of Antonio's wife, Elena; the third back in the present and again alternating between Antonio and the soldier. There's some overlap, especially between Antonio an the soldier as their lives begin to touch in LA, which is well done: as much repetition as is necessary to illuminate the characters' different experiences of the same event, but not so much that it feels forced. The day of Elena's death, fittingly, is re-told in its entirety through the eyes of each of the three main characters.
Since Elena's death is apparent from the beginning, I was pleasantly surprised that the middle section of the book is in her voice. It gives her more life than Antonio's memories can provide, and it adds to Antonio's own characterization. The soldier has less depth than Antonio and Elena and certainly isn't sympathetic, but he's at least plausible.
ellagenetics's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Sexual content, War, Child death, and Violence
Moderate: Sexism
Minor: Sexual assault