The Feast Of The Goat

Feast Of The Goat (2002) is the second Mario Vargas Llosa novel I've read, and as much as I liked The Bad Girl, this novel surpassed it in my estimation. It is a meticulously researched historical novel about the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic told from three points of view. The first perspective in the novel is from Urania Cabral, daughter of one of the major players in the Trujillo regime who fell from favor shortly before his assassination. She has an insider's view and an outsider's perspective since she was able to escape to America to study and has become something of an amateur historian on the Trujillo regime. There is more to her story, but discussing it would give away one of the major plot points of the novel,however she largely tells her story in the third person, but sometimes she switches to the second person to tell about her particular trauma. The second perspective is from Trujillo himself during his last days leading up to the assassination. The third perspective is from the assassination conspirators. Through these three perspectives, Llosa is able to bring to life a slice of history from a tormented period of Dominican history. He is particularly adept in chronicling the excesses of the man and his family from petty politics, avarice, exploitation, torture, and murder. Sadly he was backed by the U.S. government during most of his tenure as a strong anti-communist state in the increasing leftist Latin America/Caribbean region. However, Llosa suggests in the book that during the Kennedy administration his human rights abuses were beginning to catch up with him and the U.S. It is alternately accessible and complex at the same time in the way that Llosa structures the story and going back and forth in time in the different narrative sections. It reminds me that Junot Diaz also wrote about the Trujillo regime in his opus, The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao. However, I must say that I am looking forward to reading more Llosa novels in the future.