{"id":693,"date":"2013-07-08T12:07:22","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T20:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=693"},"modified":"2013-07-08T12:07:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T20:07:22","slug":"review-the-war-of-don-emmanuels-nether-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/08\/review-the-war-of-don-emmanuels-nether-parts\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
\n The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts<\/a> by Louis de Berni\u00e8res<\/a>
\n My rating: 5 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

My copy of this book is sort of battered, even though I\u2019ve only read it twice now. That\u2019s because I tend to take my time with it, reading in fits and snatches. I carry around with me during that time, shoving it in a backpack, and airline seat back, next to the bed, next to the sofa, or on the floor in my office. It\u2019s almost a companion more than a book, a lost friend revisiting for a short while.<\/p>\n

The War of Don Emmanuel\u2019s Nether Parts<\/i> is hilarious, tragic, sad, exuberant, disturbingly violent, magical and poignant. It\u2019s got a structure that feels like a cobbled together collection of loosely-connected tales, although there\u2019s a cohesion that belies more forethought than just a random gathering of pages. The characters are rich and humane, even the most terrible ones, the ones who deserve their awful fates. The plot is\u2026 meandering, if you insist on applying such an examination on the book as is required to understand plot at all.<\/p>\n

Don Emmanuel<\/i> is classified as magic realism, I suppose, but the real magic is the prose, the ebbing and flowing, wandering prose, the sentences that court and flirt and caress, making even descriptions of utter depravity readable and nearly acceptable. De Bernieres writes such that you want to trust him, put your faith in him that it\u2019s good to hear these stories. He\u2019s Aurelio, and you\u2019re his daughter Parlanchina.<\/p>\n

Maybe the best thing of all is that this is only the first book in a trilogy, and so if you\u2019re smitten by de Bernieres and this anonymous South American country and it\u2019s crazy, horny, brave and silly people, there\u2019s still more to love and keep loving.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts by Louis de Berni\u00e8res My rating: 5 of 5 stars My copy of this book is sort of battered, even though I\u2019ve only read it twice now. That\u2019s because I tend to take my time with it, reading in fits and snatches. I carry around with me during … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-bb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}