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Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
"We are cattle but you are pigs!" This defiant declaration is the heart of the conflict in the American debut of a highly regarded Mexican writer. In a freewheeling but finely tuned work that makes use of magic realism, Boullosa describes the ordeal of a native people conquered and preyed upon by the Spanish, here not soldiers but buccaneers. A bildungsroman of sorts, this fictional chronicle uses real locations (Tortuga Island), and people (Alexander O. Exquemeling) to render Caribbean piracy in the second half of the 17th century. The primary narrator, Jean Smeeks, is a European lad who is kidnapped in Flanders, put on a ship bound for Tortuga Island and sold into slavery. After learning medicine from a native healer and a French surgeon, Smeeks signs on to be a medical officer in a marauding brotherhood of pirates, or "pigs." As the story unfolds, the reader is treated to a running commentary on the difference between the "pigs"who envision their life as democratic, free of women and of national and religious prejudiceand the land-locked, law-abiding "cattle," bound by traditional values. The squeamish should be advised that references to pig and cow viscera spill across these deftly written pages. The narrative is fractured into many different voices and stories, but this format appropriately reflects the restless, roaming pirate life, and all the strands knit together in a well-crafted closure. Regarded as one of the most dazzling of Latin America's new generation, Boullosa justifies her laurels in this rich work. (May)
They're Cows, We're Pigs
eBook
$10.49
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ISBN-13:
9781555846039
- Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
- Publication date: 12/01/2007
- Sold by: Barnes & Noble
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 192
- File size: 3 MB
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The emerging societies of the Caribbean in the seventeenth century were a riotous assembly of pirates, aristocrats, revolutionaries, and rogues -- outcasts and fortune seekers all. In They're Cows, We're Pigs, acclaimed Mexican novelist Carmen Boullosa animates this world of bloody chaos and uncertain possibility through the eyes of the young Jean Smeeks, kidnapped in Flanders at age thirteen and sold into indentured servitude on Tortuga, the mythical Treasure Island. Trained in the magic of medicine by le Negre Miel, an African slave healer, and Pineau, a French-born surgeon, Smeeks signs on as a medical officer with the pirate band the Brethren of the Coast. Transformed by the looting and violence of pirate life, Smeeks finds himself both healer and despoiler, servant and mercenary, suspended between the worlds of the law-abiding, tradition-bound "cows" and the freely roaming and raiding "pigs."
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Library Journal
In 1666, 13-year-old Jean Smeeks of Flanders sells himself as an indentured servant to the French West Indies Company and soon finds himself a slave on the island of Tortuga in the Caribbean. Fortunately, here he is befriended first by le Ngre Miel, an African slave, who instructs him in herbal medicine, and then by Pineau, the French Huguenot surgeon, from whom he learns "modern" medicine. Thus equipped, he signs on as a surgeon for a fleet of pirate ships and becomes a pirate himself. Smeeks, the narrator, presents a mock-heroic tale in which the utopian ideals of a just and honorable pirate society are blandly countered by vivid, anatomically detailed descriptions of torture, rape, and pillage. Mexican writer Boullosa is the author of ten novels and novellas as well as numerous volumes of poetry, plays, and essays. This wryly humorous, satiric, and often macabre novel, the first of Boullosa's works to appear in English translation, will please sophisticated readers.Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, Ore.