Last Date in El Zapotal by Mateo García Elizondo

Last Date in El Zapotal

by Mateo García Elizondo

Translated by Robin Myers

Mateo Garcia Elizondo is a young author from Mexico, as far as I can see Last Date in El Zapotal (Originally published in Spanish as Una cita con la lady) is his only novel, though he has worked in other media, including graphic novels/comics, which I need to look up.

Last Date in El Zapotal is the story of a junky who heads to a backwater Mexican town to die. The book takes the form of an (often drug-addled) stream of consciousness, and it is not always obvious when is 'now' or where exactly he is. The unnamed 'hero' exists in a kind of limbo, a world between the living and the dead, occasionally his life grazes up against that of the townsfolk, but more often he is ignored. The protagonist himself has even faded into the background. Driven by such a lust for drugs, this has become his ersatz personality. It's a grim book, full of some pretty troubling (and bleak) imagery. There is no hope, even the sacred heart has an aortic infection.

The book is apparently heavily influenced by Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, but that is still on my TBR pile. It reminded in a lot of ways of The Palm Wine Drinkard, but whereas the protagonist of that book travels ever deeper into the underworld, in Last Date he is stuck, and can go neither forward nor back, though the drug haze and his crumbling existence lend the novel a surrealism almost to compare with The Palm Wine Drinkard.

This is not an easy read, but it is incredibly good. The prose cuts through the meandering plot and somehow García draws you into a character who is no longer there. At no point was I overtly aware this was a translation, and that is probably the highest praise we can give. 

126/140: ★★★★★.