Rating: 
Summary: Hell in a tropical paradise
Review: Mario Vargas Llosa's latest work takes us to the Dominican Republic under the 31 year reign of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, the canny and ruthless dictator who, in the belief that he was in partnership with God, subjected his country to a reign of terror like none ever seen in this hemisphere, aided by acoterie of thugs and sycophants whom he controlled with an infernal combination of violence, fear and blackmail. The central figure of the book, Urania Cabral, is the child of one of Trujillo's most loyal supporters, Senator Agustin Cabral, who has been losing favor with the mercurial dictator; and who, in a desperate attempt to win back both position and prestige, arranges what can only be called a deal with the devil; an act so horrendous that it will forever cost him the love and respect of his daughter. Interspersed with Urania's history is the narrative of the plot that resulted in Trujillo's assassination in May of 1961 and its subsequent denouement. The account of the arrest and torture of the assassins is not for the squeamish; Vargas Llosa presents it in sickening detail. Along with the story line of Urania's flight to the United States and her subsequent self-imposed exile, and the killing of Trujillo which liberated the Dominican Republic from one of the most odious dictators on the planet, Vargas Llosa provides us with a stark portrait of Trujillo himself: diabolically clever, devious, cruel, unable to deal with advancing old age that no more spares him than anyone else; pathetically trying to prove his masculinity by raping virgins; repelled by the Haitian blood that darkened his skin and attempting to purge his self-loathing in the cold-blooded massacre of thousands of Haitian settlers. A fascinating and repulsive offshoot of Trujillo is his son Ramfis, named by his father as a general of the Dominican army at the age of seven, fit for nothing but dissipation, and so stuck on himself that he feels he is bestowing an honor on young girls by raping and humiliating them. One of the most enigmatic and intriguing, albeit loathesome, characters of the book is the self-serving, double-dealing figurehead president Joaquin Balaguer, playing both ends against the middle while he cravenly submits to the dictatorship's cruelty and tyranny. "The Feast of the Goat" is not a great book; it's confusing at times, rambles at intervals; but it provides a powerful look at one of the most revolting figures of the 20th century and the repressive society he built almost single-handedly, and makes us feel what it must have been like to live in such a country. Vargas Llosa is an enormously gifted author and this book gives abundant evidence of his great talent as a writer.
Rating:
Summary: The Latin American Dictator Novel-Neoliberal version
Review: Mario Vargas Llosa's novel about the assassination of General Trujillo, the dictator of the Dominican Republic, possess considerable power. If not on the level of "The War of the End of the World," "The Feast of the Goat," is still a major achievement. As always, Vargas Llosa's technique is in fine form. Consider his description of the noise of Santo Dominigo: "Today all the clamor of life--car engines, cassettes, records, radios, horns, barks, growls, human voices--seems to resound at top volume, producing vocal, mechanical, digital, or animal noise at maximum capacity (dogs bark louder, birds chirp with more enthusiasm)." Or consider his description of the Trujillo mansion: "She barely noticed the portraits and pictures of the Generalissimo--on foot and on horseback, in military uniform or dressed as a farmer, sitting at a desk or standing behind a lectern wearing the presidential sash--that hung on the walls, or the silver trophies and framed certificates won by the dairy cows and thoroughbred horse of the Fundacion Ranch, intermingled with plastic ashtrays and cheap decorations, still bearing the labels of Macy's in New York..."Vargas Llosa is masterful in evoking the atmosphere of fear and sycophancy that reigns among Trujillo and his subordinates. There are several gripping scenes about the horrible tortures that Trujillo's assasins underwent after things went horribly wrong. There is also Vargas Llosa's attempt to understand the dictator. Wisely, perhaps, there is no attempt at false sympathy (one thinks of the portrait of Hitler that occurs in "Life and Fate") and he presents to us the unimaginative, vicious martinet, proud of his punctuality, hard work, sense of cleanliness, inability to sweat as he indulges his special vice, rape. Still, one should not accept this version on faith. "The War of the End of the World," was praised for the way it appeared to allot sympathies to both sides. But as Robert Levine pointed out in his book on the Canudos Massacre, the book is flawed because Anthony the Counsellor was not the millenialist fanatic that Vargas Llosa's neoliberal ideology wished to emphasize. How has Vargas Llosa's ideology affected this novel? Well, for a start, it is some importance to point out that Joaquim Balauger's reforms after the death of Trujillo did NOT turn the Dominican Republic into a democracy. It is important to point that when Antonio Imbert, one of only two of Trujillo's assassins to survive, returned to public life, he did not have a liberal or a benign effect on Dominican society. And as Piero Gleijeses has pointed out in the definitive book on the topic, when Dominicans did try to achieve a real democracy, the Americans intervened in 1965 to stop them. One does not get that from the novel. An emphasis on the heroic assassins produces an individualist bias that tends to downplay the mobilization, organization and debate needed to create a viable democracy. There is another bias. The assassins were all part of the Trujillista establishment. Vargas Llosa tends to emphasize their honorable motives for resistance, that they opposed Trujillo because of the vicious acts of cruelty he committed. In his discussion of General Roman's failure to provide necessary support for the assassins, Vargas Llosa emphasizes the hypnotic effect the dictator still had on Roman, as opposed to rank cowardice ad fear. Still, in providing these details, methinks Vargas Llosa doth protest too much. Given their horrible fates it might be churlish to suggest that they tried to kill Trujillo because after his denunciation by both the church and the Americans they knew which way the wind was blowing. But the result is like looking at Hitler from the perspective of the plotters of July 20th, while ignoring all the other victims. Trujillo, after all was a tyrant who oppressed all Dominicans. Yet there is an unseemly emphasis on the betrayals of those closest to him, the murders of the middle class resistance, as if what happened to that small class mattered more than the overwhelming majority of the country. There is a brief discussion of the thousands of Haitians whom Trujillo ordered murdered in the thirties, and the fact that he and his pathological family have looted much of the country. But the old left-wing Latin American criticism that the United States wanted a "Trujilloism without Trujillo", ie the same old exploitive, repressive and subservient structures but without a patently certifiable psychotic embarrassing everyone, is not so much refuted, as evaded. There is a certain cunning in this. Trujillo and his accomplices like to describes themselves as bringing order and progress to this, but it is hard to see, at least in this book, why anyone would be convinced by this. And the concluding epiphany on sexual tyranny shows, in my opinion, that Vargas Llosa is better in describing machismo than its victims. During his unsuccessful run for the Peruvian presidency in 1990, Vargas Llosa received much empty praise as the heroic courageous man who would make Peru safe for liberalism. Clearly this flattery has influenced and shaped the form of this beguiling yet partly hollow novel.
Rating: 
Summary: A Contemporary Classic
Review: Mario Varlgas Llosa is easily on my personal list of all-time Great Latin American Authors. I have been an avid fan for quite some time and have read several of his masterpieces: La ciudad y los perros (1960), the novel that launched his literary career and caused a sensation in the literary world when it was published ... and initiated the second phase of the "boom" in Latin American literature; la casa verde (1964); Conversacion en la Catedral (1964); and La verdad de las mentiras (1990). The current THE FEAST OF THE GOAT (La Fiesta del Chivo) is written with an insurmountable rhythm and precision that is classic Vargas Llosa. Those of us who lived during the unbelievably nightmarish Tujillo Era and in the ghoulish shadow of the Dictador under Balaguer (especially the infamous "12 Years") recall all too well the ruthlessness of this beast. The author handles ingeniously the characterizations and events of the period. And therein lies the mastery of this political-socially astute and innovative writer: his expanded concept of reality and his precepts about literature being born of a reality that is actually lived. This story is powerful. In honestly, however, I take serious issue with Vargas Llosa in that he does not give appropriate credit to a few present-day Dominican literary giants like Frank Moya Pons, Bernardo Vega, Roberto Cassa, and Jose Michel Cordero ... for their already published, widely respected historical research [upon which most every writer draws for accurate historical perspective] on the subject. Only a Vargas Llosa, I suppose, has the literary supremacy to pull it off so cleverly. Nevertheless, this is a novel that will enlighten the reader about the last days of the Trujillo Era and the psyche of "el Chivo"...goat. Pay very close attention to the quite, unassuming poet-president. Vargas Llosa is a priceless literary treasure. Alan Cambeira
Author of AZUCAR! The Story of Sugar (a novel)
Rating:
Summary: Impressive book, history and fiction brilliantly combined
Review: MVLL's "Feast of the Goat" is an impressive book, sincerely one of the best ones I have read in long time. The novel includes more than 60 years in time, from 1930, in the beginnings of more than 30 years of dictatorship on the part of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, to the 90's, where some facts occurred during the regime still mark the life of some of the characters. The book is structured in three histories narrated in parallel form, related, but in different periods from time. The first half of the book is very interesting, nevertheless, as one advances, the three histories are reaching each one its own climax, to finally arrive at it almost simultaneously, in a point that is almost impossible to leave the reading. Then, the three histories are mixed totally until forming a single one. Everything is good in this book, the story (the script), the narrative and technical ability of MVLL; and the structure of the novel, which as I already mentioned is quite impressive, the best. Another one of the characteristics that make of this work a success, is that it's based on real facts. One is reading this fascinating story always having in the mind that this can have happened, in fact, the historical events are the base on which the stories of the characters are developed (many of them historical characters). I have read 4 or 5 books of this brilliant Peruvian author, candidate to Nobel, and in my opinion this one is the best one.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent suspense
Review: Not until the very last part of this marvelous expose of the Tyrant of the Western Hemisphere does Vargas Llosa allow the tension to decrease,
But it takes perseverance on the part of the reader who is not versed in the history of his bloody reign and doesn't know who Murphy was or that Trujillo committed genocide against Haitians.
His antipathy to black Haitians was partly caused by his own admixture of Haitian blood, which he tried to conceal by using makeup to lighten his complexion.
My only regret (as the author of another historical novel, THE TENTH PRAYER: A NOVEL OF ISRAEL) was that Vargas Llosa left out the only good thing Trujillo ever did -- he made a liar out of Adolf Hitler.
Hitler had bet that no country would take any German Jews. The Evian conference was set up to debate this. And Trujillo accepted some 300 German Jews, the only country that accepted any.
Those Jews survived the Holocaust.
Rating:
Summary: Writing a Good Story
Review: Other reviewers have told the general story of this novel. I wish to comment on it as a literary work. One reviewer complained that it is not historically accurate. The charge is wrong and futile. It is a novel, not a history book. The author is allowed to pick and choose. He is allowed the willing suspension of disbelief. I once read an interview with Gunther Grass where, asked the inevitable but naïve question, "Why do you write?" he explained that it was his way of making sense out of the world around him. The writer's business is to find organization in an often chaotic world and he must serve the story. Not, you may note, to serve his family, or to serve history or the truth, but to serve the story. Vargas Llosa wrote his story. And he did it exceptionally well. He is a masterful story teller and a genius in the use of language. I read the novel in Spanish and found it outstanding. I just hope that the translation does justice to his work. Read this novel for its beauty, its storytellingness, its clever portrayal of the Dominican people and their political situation. Read it to see how Vargas Llosa makes sense out of a chaotic situation. Remember, it is a novel.
Rating: 
Summary: One part brilliance, two parts disappointment.
Review: Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa's latest novel is a devastating look at the regime of Dominican dictator Omar Trujillo. In "Feast of the Goat" he weaves three story lines into the fabric of the story, only one of which has the intended power needed to make this book reach its full potential as a landmark piece of political fiction. The sections given over to Trujillo ("the Goat") himself are brilliant glimpses into the strongman's sick and frightening mind. Vargas Llosa puts us into the Goat's head and lets us experience the world of a man with total power. He finds traces of a strange humanity, something completely absent from the shadowy figures of Trujillo's repellent sons. In other words, life in the Dominican Republic is bad, but it can get worse. Less successful is the modern strand of storyline, which has a woman named Urania returning to Santo Domingo after many years in New York. No matter what has happened to Urania, few readers will be drawn to her. The assassins' plot storyline is jumbled, full of names the reader is apparently supposed to recognize (and due to the Latin use of double last names there seems to be a daunting number of them). The assassins are poorly defined and difficult to keep straight. Their recounting of Trujillo's abuses is grisly, but lacks the impact of the Goat's own bizarre justifications for such horror. "Feast of the Goat" is an important book, and Mario Vargas Llosa is an important writer, not an infallible one. I wonder if editors were too intimidated to admit that everything he does is not perfect. If someone had sat down with him to clarify the assassins and add a spark of life to Uranita, this might have been one of the most wrenching books on repression to hit the shelves in a long time.
Rating:
Summary: One part brilliance, two parts disappointment.
Review: Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa's latest novel is a devastating look at the regime of Dominican dictator Omar Trujillo. In "Feast of the Goat" he weaves three story lines into the fabric of the story, only one of which has the intended power needed to make this book reach its full potential as a landmark piece of political fiction. The sections given over to Trujillo ("the Goat") himself are brilliant glimpses into the strongman's sick and frightening mind. Vargas Llosa puts us into the Goat's head and lets us experience the world of a man with total power. He finds traces of a strange humanity, something completely absent from the shadowy figures of Trujillo's repellent sons. In other words, life in the Dominican Republic is bad, but it can get worse. Less successful is the modern strand of storyline, which has a woman named Urania returning to Santo Domingo after many years in New York. No matter what has happened to Urania, few readers will be drawn to her. The assassins' plot storyline is jumbled, full of names the reader is apparently supposed to recognize (and due to the Latin use of double last names there seems to be a daunting number of them). The assassins are poorly defined and difficult to keep straight. Their recounting of Trujillo's abuses is grisly, but lacks the impact of the Goat's own bizarre justifications for such horror. "Feast of the Goat" is an important book, and Mario Vargas Llosa is an important writer, not an infallible one. I wonder if editors were too intimidated to admit that everything he does is not perfect. If someone had sat down with him to clarify the assassins and add a spark of life to Uranita, this might have been one of the most wrenching books on repression to hit the shelves in a long time.
Rating:
Summary: A harsh time in history when ruthlessness ruled
Review: Rafael Trujillo ruled the Dominican Republic with an iron hand from 1930 to 1961. His cruelty and brutality could sentence people to disgrace, torture or death on a whim. His lust for power and women was insatiable, and a climate of fear was everywhere. Mario Vargas Llosa, the prize winning Peruvian author knows his subject well. And in this novel, he uses his best storytelling talents to recreate that harsh time in history when ruthlessness ruled. The known facts are all there, re-interpreted by the author to facilitate our understanding of what it must have been like to live through those awful times. And the few fictional characters are there to help tell the story. The story is told through three different viewpoints. The first is set in the present day, when a middle-aged female attorney who has lived in the United States since the age of 14, returns to the Dominican Republic. She's full of anger at her invalid father who was once an official in Trujillo's government, and it is only at the very end of the book that we understand why. But as she meets her relatives and finally lets them hear her personal story, two other compelling narratives are taking place in alternating chapters which are set in 1961. The reader gets a chance to see into the mind's eye of Rafael Trujillo himself. He's 70 years old now. Always immaculately well groomed, he's embarrassed by bouts of incontinence. And he's also finding it difficult to consummate his erotic encounters with young women. He's upset about these matters, but his mind is razor sharp, deeply involved in the political intrigues that are his forte, and able to force his underlings to shiver in terror at the whims of his disfavor. And then there is a group of assassins, who we first meet as they wait in the darkness to ambush his car on a lonely road. Each of these men has a good reason to hate the dictator. Each has a sorrowful story and as each story unfolds, I was able to better understand the vast mosaic of the evil regime and its effects on their lives and those of their relatives. I was horrified at the many acts of cruelty they had to endure. And I found myself worrying about the safety of their families. Then it happens. We all knew it would. After all, it's in all the history books. Rafael Trujillo was assassinated. But this is not a joyful conclusion. The regime didn't fall. And the punishments meted out to the perpetrators by Trujillo's son were the epitome of mercilessness. I wish the story wasn't true. It would be nice if I could think of it as a figment of the author's imagination. But alas, that is not the case. I literally couldn't put the book down and I devoured the author's words, letting them take me to the place he intended. He brought me right into the Dominican Republic during those awful times and into the hearts and minds of the very real human beings who lived through it. It was a voyage into the evil mind of Trujillo. And it also gave me an understanding of the forces that shaped the Dominican Republic. And, weaving it all together is the story of a woman who seemed to escape. Or did she? I give this book my highest recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Too well written
Review: Set in the last days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, the book describes the brutality of the dictatorship and the failed attempts to overthrow it. The description is as seen through the eyes and experiences of a few individuals. Maybe few books have been better written, but the description of torture is hard to read, far worse that that described in "The Kite Runner". Also important: the old aunt's denial near the end that her brother had commited any wrong. Ah, yes, the denial of wrongs committed, and the worse the crime, the more complete the state of denial.
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