The ones we love never leave us, even if they die; the state is a burdensome bureaucracy rumbling somewhere in the distance; being ordained by the church does not a holy man make; there is a case to be made for spiritual sanity; de Bernieres explores these ideas in what I thought was the first of his South American books, but in fact is the second, or third. Senior Vivo and the Coca Lords is the first and I therefore already know the ending. I'm happy to read it, however, because if it's anything like this luminous tale of the good and evil man can't help but impart to others, tinged with unexplained magic accepted as if it were normal, shot through with humor both subtle and hyperbolic, I will be more than happy with it. Shifting gears into the denouement, however, the plot hiccups and stalls, but not for too long, and his writing is so captivating that one barely notices it. de Bernieres can really write a novel.

Set in an imaginary Latin American country the novel's political themes parody the worst excesses of the Pinochet government of Chile, the collapse of democratic social order in Uruguay in the 1970's and other dirty wars of the 1960's to 1980's in Southern and Central America.
In the village of Cochadebajo macho philosophers, defrocked priests and reformed (though still active) prostitutes live in cheerful anarchy. But this unruly utopia is about to be interrupted when the demon-harried Cardinal Guzman decides to inaugurate a new Inquisition, with Cochadebajo as its ultimate target.
Cardinal Guzman lives extravagantly and immorally, due to the discovery of his having fathered a son, and his loathing of the poor shanty-dwellers who live below his palace. He has an army of fanatics who are all too willing to destroy bodies in order to save souls. His clergy and the corrupt military set out to destroy the heresy of the countryside, and in doing so the hypocrisy of his faith and his promiscuousness is revealed, as is the hypocrisy of religion in general and the Catholics in particular.
I tried a few times to read this but couldn't get into it. I'm glad I persevered though because I did enjoy it. It's quirky, full of very funny characters (had to make notes of who they all were!), and a brilliant plot. It was rather gruesome at times.

3.9/5
This book (the last of the series) was way better than the second but it still cannot surpass the first one. I guess it has all its qualities but it's repetition and it becomes a bit tedious after some point. Actually, my excitement about the curve was shaped like an inversed U. At the beginning the level of ridiculousness and vulgarity was too much to bear (for me, at least). The passage describing Cardinal Guzman's daemons was in many ways too graphic (as so many other small details). Some scenes were just as 'graphic' but it didn't feel superfluous.
Overall I've had fun with this book (and trilogy), although I fear I have not reconciled myself with magical realism. I've loved following the stories of some of the characters (not all of them, I couldn't care less about Emmanuel or Dionisio, I already had to put up with him for a whole book), accepting to follow this completely irrational and surreal plot has been quite... an experience.

Mildly disappointing, but only compared to the insanely high standards I have come to expect from Mr de Berniéres and his extreme awesomeness as an author.

The story

Cardinal Guzman is not the best guy around, not even by normal person standards. And the man is a Cardinal! So as you might expect, Cardinal Guzman has a lot of repressed guilt and a bit of self loathing lurking around his subconscious. Because he's not an inherently evil man or anything. And the self loathing starts to manifest itself in the form of demonic appearances and extreme stomach cramps. The Cardinal cannot go on this way, and isn't improving in spite of the tender ministrations of his mistress (oops!) or the affections of his illegitimate son (double oops!). So the cardinal decides that drastic action is the only way to save his soul.

Cardinal Guzman means well, but upon collecting data relating to the state of Catholicism in the nation, the Cardinal is deeply disturbed. Reports came thick and fast about the bastardisation of the Catholic faith, with tales of renegade priests preaching free love, happiness, and a guilt-free existence. The Cardinal sends out a man of the church to right the wrongs of the peasants.

Cochadebajo de los Gatos is right where de Berniéres left it in The War For Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts and Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord, and all our old favourites are still there. However, Cardinal Guzman's crusade is a threat to how they live their lives, and even their lives themselves. When the village becomes aware of the threat to their existence, drastic action must be taken to protect themselves...

The style

It was de Berniéres, and it was good. Specifics: The perspective was your classic third person semi-omniscient focusing on different people at different times. Beautifully timed and paced, The Troublesome Offspring Of Cardinal Guzman switches effortlessly between characters, managing to retain a good pace while not overwhelming the reader with Spanish names and people. The characters are all incredibly well done; however if you hadn't read at least one of the two previous books in this series you might find the quantity of character development of those within the Cochadebajo de los Gatos lacking - Louis de Berniéres spent so much time delving into their personalities in his other novels that he focused more on his new characters on this one - which is reasonable, that's just a warning.

The storyline is cunningly created and twisty as is the style of Louis de Berniéres, with coincidences and slow wanderings toward disaster and nail-biting suspense within the story. de Berniéres has this ability to make you feel like you are there, watching, completely involved and invested in the plot. I don't cry much, in general, but de Berniéres can make tears spring to my eyes with the least provocation. The guy has skills.

On the downside, I didn't love it as much as I loved The War For Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts. I think the main reason was because while I felt that the ideas behind the story were very strong, as usual - Guzman's comments about belief, religion and beaurocracy just to name a couple - they were a bit... tired. I felt like I knew where it was going, I could see the direction and the plot and he was sort of doing reruns of previous themes instead of working in more new stuff. When I read The War For Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, I found all the social commentary and issues intriguing and new, and just gutsed the whole book down fast. The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman took me a little longer, and didn't keep me quite so involved. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed it. I just didn't enjoy it as much as some of his other stuff. I would still recommend it though.

Who is this book for?

This book is for people who want a little thoughtfulness with their reading material, written in an engaging way. The issues are masterfully presented and for lovers of contemporary literature, it doesn't get much better written than by Louis de Berniéres. I reckon.

If you like this book, you would also like...

Louis de Berniéres's other books. I can't rate him highly enough.

DeBernieres wrote a trilogy of novels set in a fictional country in South America, mimicing the "magical realism" style of other South American authors. They're ok, and The Troublesome Offspring is maybe the best of the three. I particularly liked the spirit of Thomas Aquinas, paying penance for the group of thugs that used Aquinas's writings as justification for their murderous rampage.

There are two books here. There's the book I thought I was going to read, or at least that I remembered reading when I embarked on the trilogy, which is all sunshine and magic and is utterly hilarious. That book is there. It jumps and glitches and skips gleefully about between chapters. It's wonderful. It's full of anarchic, occasionally even slapstick, humour.

Then there's the book I had forgotten about. That book is all violence and pain, all stupid, wasteful cruelty, all hideous, self-righteous acts of barbarity, and is deadly-serious, stone-cold, pitch-black satire. Thank God for the magic, because that second book is unbearably tragic. Thank God for the magic, because that on its own would need a strong stomach.

What the Latin American trilogy does - what each volume does - is to alternate between those two aspects. It sweetens the bitterness of the one with the honeyed joy of the other. Magic makes everything okay in the end. And I think the magic on its own might have seemed a little shallow.
And so, having reached the end of the Latin American Trilogy, I can recommend it, even if, if you're reading this, you've probably read the other two volumes already.

A couple of suggestions: If you like the jokes then try Desolation Road by Ian McDonald, which is gorgeously written and altogether too silly for words. If you care for the other aspect then you might like Llosa's The War of the End of the World, which almost certainly inspired this one.

I struggled between 3 and 4 stars. He's a fantastic writer, his story interesting, his
characters unforgettable. Though he's not South American, the book is set in a mythical
South American country and his writing reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Like Marquez, he's a master of magical realism, a genre I like. But his bleak, picture of human (or should i say inhuman) nature with it's graphic details, was very disturbing. I didn't realize this was part of a trilogy; I had read The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, which I also liked. I will eventually read "Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord," but will take a long rest first. I also read his Corelli's Mandolin (not part of the trilogy) which I liked a lot.

Struggled to finish this one, and might not have except for the forced "stay at home" order. There were 388 pages, and probably about that many words I didn't know, so I had some fun learning new words: teratoma, sybaritic, parturition, casuistry, panoply, lepidoptera ... but otherwise I didn't enjoy the story much. It felt like it was supposed to be funny/satire, but I'm not sure I understand Catholicism or Latin American politics enough to really get it.

Truly eloquent, deeply honest, penetratingly observant and so witty you are frustrated not to be able to share the odd paragraph out loud

The weirdest and third of the trilogy. The back cover gives adequate warning and sums up quite well ;- "While the economy of this small South American country collapses, President Veracruz joins his improbable populance of ex-soldiers, former guerillas, unfrocked priests and reformed - though by no means inactive - whores, in a bizarre search for sexual fulfillment.

But for Cardinal Guzzman, a man tormented by his own private demons, their stupendous, hedonistic fiestas represent the epicentre of all heresies. Heresies that must be challenged with a horrifying new inquisition destined to climax in a spectacular confrontation."

The book is completely readable and not all weirdness but to give a flavour, from chapter34 - "His Eminence looked at the desk in his room and saw that it had become a rotten coffin through whose distorted boards there sprouted verminous cascades of ancient hair that waved like the tentacles of an anemone. There was no doubt that the grey wisps were growing apace and were winding about the furniture. A hank of it curled about his ankle and began to constrict it like a boa. He shouted, pulling his leg away, but the force reduced the casket to dust, and on the floor where his desk had been, there was now a cadaver watching him. The skin was shrunk over the bones like an Indian mummy, the hair was growing with the speed of a stream, and the amber teeth of the mouth smiled at him with contemptuous inanity."

Good luck with this one !

Struggled through the paper book. It was too quirky; in places grotesquely violent; satirical with such vitriol that the pages were almost dripping with it. I found the constant switching between storylines disjointed and exhausting. I didn’t read the previous books in the loose series, which didn’t help since a large number of characters carried over from there, and I felt I was missing a great deal of background. Nothing endearing or captivating or enjoyable about it. My first and last book by this author for sure.

What can I say? The books in this trilogy are astonishing. I came to discover them after reading Corelli's Mandolin, a great book in its own right, but I had no idea what I was in for here. First, I'd recommend that you begin with the first book, The War of Don Emanuel's Nether Parts, and work your way up to this last installment. Written in a somewhat nonlinear plot structure, the story jumps from one character interlocking with others, and there are a lot of characters being juggled at once. In addition, the tone of each chapter can change from humor or melancholy, to gut-wrenching horror. But this book is far from just being about South America--just read the headlines in today's papers. I am so looking forward to reading more of de Bernieres' books that I need to take a moment and decide which one is next.