La voz que narra El obsceno pájaro de la noche fluye infatibale de los labios del Mudito, como en un viaje desde el ser hacia la nada, elaborando un mundo destinado, por la maldición intrínseca de la existencia, al deterioro, la pérdida o la confusión de cualquier identidad posible.

Las viejas que pueblan la Casa de la Encarnación de la Chimba y los monstruos de la Rinconada ilustran cada matiz de la desesperación y cada uno de los ínfimos placeres cotidianos, anudando siempre al ciego instinto de la vida un inextinguible terror ante lo oscuro, lo innombrable, lo que ya no tiene forma.

«El obsceno pájaro de la noche exhibe en sus páginas una de las mayores paradojas que definieron la obra de su autor: un cuento de monstruos como representación de la mejor tradición de nuestra ficción más realista».

Donoso’s shape was brilliant, and the way he explained the unreliability of his narrator at the end was a clever move. But the body and content of the psychological disturbance was uninteresting to me; I feel he skirted the interesting characters in the book for a focus on Humberto Peñaloza. Humberto certainly had enough fixations and disturbances to fill the book, but I was more curious about Ines, and Mother Benita, and the Boy. The unanswered questions that made up the majority of the book didn’t bother me; I enjoyed the challenge of attempting to distinguish fact from distortion, or even pick a chronology out of the narrated stream. Yet because of the content, I felt disinclined to pick this book up each time I sat down to read, and found myself wishing violently that they would talk about something else, anything else, most of the time. Perhaps that disgust is the true message of the book, that humanity is too dirty to look at directly and that any beauty is created and manipulated to disguise human nature. At any rate, I’m glad it’s done; I finished it because it was borrowed and recommended. ( )

Donoso remains The Man!
Ten years before Allende's Casa de los espíritus came its power-acid prequel, Obsceno párajo de la noche. The best review and explanation I can give for potential readers is that Donoso takes people's intentions and turns them into characters.
Donoso, as several commenters here have already noted, lived in a tense moment as his country lost its hold on the rigid and criminal class system left over from the British Empire. And anyone who knows Latin America at that time doesn't have to guess that Donoso would've been more than versed in Marxism. So with that in mind, prepare to read how he takes the desires and needs of conflicting classes and forces them into monstrous incest. He takes ideas that we all know --a child is supposed to fulfill its parent's life, a powerless person wants to take power, birthright and inheritance, --and flips them in these super-clever ways such that the characters rob each other of their intentions' outcomes, overtake each others' perspectives on things and even nest their identities, in this bidirectional class-war way that makes total sense if you're sick or stoned enough to follow it on a nervous level. Although I do dig the imbunche riff that critics have focused on, that's like, just the beginning of his analysis of South American bourgeois morality. One of the greatest works of art ever to realistically portray abusive relationships, even if it had to go ballistic to do it. If Isabel Allende is Billy Joel, Donoso is GWAR.
NOTE although my review is in English, I did in fact read Donoso's own voice as this GR edition indicates ( )

Misia Raquel Ruiz lloro muchísimo cuando la Madre la llamo por teléfono para contarle que la Brigida había amanecido muerta. Después se consoló un poco y pidió mas detalles:.....

Salir de la "Casa Imbunche", como la nombra Mudito en cierto punto, es un alivio. Este libro es la muestra grotesca e inverosímil de la pérdida de identidad, de la diferencia entre clases, del sexo, de la vejez, de la muerte, de la deformidad, de la dominancia patriarcal, de la religión, de la brujería, del vicio, de mil temas oscuros y conflictivos. Humberto, o quizá Humberto-Jerónimo, Humberto-Monstruo, Humberto-Desmembrado, Humberto-Eunuco, Humberto-Mudito, Mudito-Vieja, Vieja-Guagua, Guagua-Imbunche, Imbunche-Polvo, tiene suerte de haber escapado de entre las páginas de este libro, de esta pesadilla demencial. Yo dudo que pueda hacerlo ya. ( )