3 minute read
CLAIRE CONSIDERS
CLAIRE CONSIDERS
The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro
The Bullet Swallower (Simon & Schuster (2024) by Elizabeth Gonzalez James is a wild yarn of a story with elements of a classic western adventure invigorated with mystical realism and more than a gloss of karmic turbulence. In short, it’s fascinating. Literary historical fiction at its finest, it’s an ambitious novel with so much more than its vivid, riveting plot to recommend it. This one will make you think—and feel. There are passages so gorgeous in their phrasing that they deserve to be read aloud and savored.
The Amazon blurb says: “Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez” and yet to this reviewer it was more like Lonesome Dove meets Louise Erdrich. The plot takes a hero’s journey archetype (or rather an anti-hero’s journey) and spins it on its head—and across several generations when a ruthless Mexican, son of an even more ruthless man, sets out on a seemingly impossible journey to rob a train of gold. The anti-hero, Antonio Sonoro, is a desperate and nearly destitute man. Things do not go as he’d planned to say the least, but a painful loss sends him on a desert odyssey of revenge. Conflict, action, and danger make this a riveting read with a definite page-turning quality, yet there is so much more than mere adventure in the book.
Seventy years later, this Mexican bandit’s descendant—a famous Mexican entertainer named Jamie Sonoro—finds that he may be the one to pay the karmic cost for the crimes of his ancestors. A woman gifts him with a book that amazingly tracks his family’s history. The mysterious book goes all the way back to Cain and Abel. Jamie is conflicted, naturally, to learn of his ancestors’ crimes even as the book triggers new adventures.
Set in Mexico and Texas, the tale is imaginative, and the writing is excellent. It is also, surprisingly, often rather funny—surprising given the violence and action elements. Exciting, unique, and immensely readable, this is a book to read and ponder. It’s worth repeating that this novel is utterly fascinating. Within its themes of revenge, retribution, and violence, The Bullet Swallower also asks important questions about racism and colonialism. All in all, this is an epic, magical story based in part upon one of the author’s own ancestors. An author’s footnote explains this connection.
