A lovely read. Great translation. This book deserves to be better known. ( )

The Neruda Case by Roberto Ampuero is a fictional mystery novel surrounding the investigating requested by the famous poet, Pablo Neruda, to the main character, Cayetano Brulé, to search for an unknown medical scientist named Ángel Bracamonte in hopes of what is assumed to be a medical cure and breakthrough for Cancer.

Though the backdrop of the novel is lush in its description of Valparaíso and the Latin American setting, food, and culture, it is also heavily laden with politics during the socialist reign of President Salvador Allende that ends with the coup d’état and dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

And behind the story and search by Neruda-imposed investigator, Brulé, is the revelation of Pablo Neruda’s obsession with women and what his own personal friends have described as “serial monogamy.”

Though the premise of the story could make for a compelling story, especially for one who admires Neruda’s politics or poetry, actually falls short in its exhaustive narrative style, which had in my opinion, far too many characters and character names to remain clear and transparent.

To read the rest of this review, please visit my blog, The Bibliotaphe`s Closet: http://zaraalexis.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/the-case-for-neruda-a-review-08-05-20...

Thanks,
Zara ( )

I loved this book not only the mystery. I chose the book because I had visited Valparaiso Chile recently and toured Neruda’s home, La Sebastiana. I knew a little of the turbulent history of the 1970’s in Chile, this book helped fill in the pieces of how Neruda and his socialist beliefs fit in the picture. As the reader is transported to Havana, Berlin, Mexico City, and La Paz with the detective trying to find a lost love of Neruda’s, one discovers the connections between the socialists and communists from different countries. ( )

Cayetano Brule, an unemployed Cuban, is summoned by the famous and revered poet Pablo Neruda for a personal task. Neruda is suffering from cancer and charges Brule to find a man named Dr. Bracamonte, another Cuban who he met in Mexico some years ago who was then engaged in a study of natural remedies for Neruda's condition. When Cayetano protests that he has no experience in detective work, Neruda gives him a few books by Simenon and advises him to study the methods employed by Inspector Maigret.

The five multi-chapter sections of the book bear the titles of the names of five of the most important women in Neruda’s life, and the reasons for those titles become clear as his past is revealed. In each of the sections, one chapter is given over to Neruda's first-person reminiscences about the woman, his emotional debts and his selfish failures.

The Neruda Case puts together a mix of suspense, revolutionary turmoil, South American history, and the fictional treatment of a Nobel Prize winning poet into quite an interesting novel. It's Roberto Ampuero’s first novel to appear in English and I hope it won't be the last. ( )

In 1972, or so, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, dying of cancer in Valparaiso while Allende’s government falls apart, hires Cuban exile Cayetano Brulé to find a woman he knew 30 years before, in the hopes that the daughter she bore was his, rather than her husband’s. Because Cayetano, as he’s called throughout, has no detective skills, Neruda gives him, and insists he read, some Inspector Maigret crime novels by the Belgian author George Simenon, for training.

Cayetano travels to Havana, Mexico City, East Berlin, La Paz, and Santiago detecting, before ending up, again, in Valparaiso, unfortunately at the exact time, September 11, 1973, of Pinochet’s coup. Things don’t go well.

This story is framed within present-day events, apparently to set up the possibility of a literary future for the now-experienced investigator.
This isn’t a detective story in any way Western readers understand the genre. Instead, it is a mixture of Chilean history, a fictional reflection of Neruda’s relationships with women, some bits about the protagonists relationships with women, with none of it holding together real well, except for the fictional history. I found the character of Cayetano perplexing, getting detective-ish results by people doing things for him and providing him information for no good reason.

It’s not awful – I did read it all the way through – but I sure can’t see what’s “delightful” about Cayetano Brulé (as one jacket blurb said) nor can I see why Ampuera is such a hit in Latin America. But he is, and if another book in the series is translated, I’ll give it a shot. This one could be just back-story. ( )