El don de la vida / The Gift of Life (Spanish Edition)

In an entertaining set of tales, replete with reminiscences, male eroticism, iconoclastic opinions, and cascading torrents of semen, one of the deans of queer Latin American letters scores with a novel that reads a bit like a memoir and a bit like a theater piece. Structured as a park-bench dialog between a graying gay Colombian man (Vallejo himself turns 68 this year) and a curious interlocutor whose identity is revealed on the final page, this work essentially a catalog of the memorable experiences and personalities that populate a lifetime. An irony of the book's title lies in the storyteller's assumption that the characters described have passed on to the embrace of sweet Death. Vallejo has never been one to withhold his opinions of other writers and, most notoriously, of the Catholic Church; in this novel, too, he takes some swings at familiar targets. The author is consciously far outside anyone's notion of the conventional mainstream; this book is not for everyone and will likely shock many more staid readers on almost every page. Nonetheless, it is highly recommended for the open-minded and adventurous, as well as for fans of GLBT literature and for readers of all stripes who enjoy challenges to the conventional.—Bruce Jensen, Kutztown Univ. Lib., PA