A review by cinereus
I'll Sell You a Dog by Juan Pablo Villalobos

5.0

Honestly I picked up this book on a whim for the "by an author from Mexico or Canada" summer book bingo square at Seattle Public Library and it was a delight. It plays on a lot of Mexican/Latin American literary tropes so may be best enjoyed if you have some familiarity with other literature of this region (there were especially many moments evocative of Allende's House of the Spirits and Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate for me), but overall it was just a lot of fun to read and had some great humorous, poignant, and weird-semi-magical-realism moments. While the plot was a bit loosey-goosey (this book is more slice of life than beginning-conflict-climax-resolution, though there is a low-level conflict throughout) there's a clear narrative and thematic thread about death, the meaning of art, class barriers and revolutions, and what it means to grow old and be forgotten (or not). Long live the cockroaches (if not the dogs).