At the start, it’s New Year’s Eve. A party sparkles with gaiety in a rustic mansion on a Pacific beach. The next morning, a little boy named Jacobo chases his toy dolphin in the swimming pool and almost drowns. “In the world to which he returned…,” the author writes, “there were words, but the connections between them were missing.” Don Emilio, Jacobo’s father, drives the boy to a building where two men dressed in white open the boy’s car door and greet him.
Nothing in The Country of Toó (pronounced Toe-oh) settles into what it appears to be at first – a happy party, a boy playing with his new Christmas toy, his mother who vanishes. The writing is visually rich, but it’s also suggestive in its withholding. We sense danger hovering, and we don’t know why.
The family chauffeur drives Jacobo’s nanny to her home in the Guatemalan countryside of her indigenous people. He’s called the Cobra, a name left over from time spent in a gang in El Salvador, and more than a driver, he is Don Emilio’s enforcer. Why Jacobo’s father, an antiques dealer, needs the Cobra becomes clear in a Godfather-like movie scene when Don Emilio consults with Dr. Loyola. It’s not a medical discussion about Jacobo’s mental delay. “We have a big fat problem,” Don Emilio says, and the two walk the country club golf course to avoid listening devices.
The story shifts to a social activist called Polo. His opposition to mining companies polluting the environment and gutting the land wins a prize. He also speaks out against the country’s corrupt oligarchs. The Cobra romances a girl within Polo’s organization. Also, there’s this memorable scene in which a friend, whose company installs high-security vaults for banks and private clients, tells Polo about an odd request from an antiques dealer. The builders are gunned down when the job is completed.
No remark is casual, no scene a mere illustrative pass-through. Something we think is a minor event turns into a significant plot twist. It’s strange and uncomfortable, what appear to be fragmented events, but they gradually coalesce with brilliant force, building toward the Cobra’s assassination assignment of Polo. His method is unnerving. So too is the surveillance of the Cobra afterward by his betrayers.
The story from here moves into themes of redemption and justice. The finality lacks the artful subtlety of what’s come before, and feels a bit like we’re being settled down after the excitement for a lesson to be explained. It’s what distinguishes this novel not as a thriller written purely for entertainment but as one written to illustrate the political crimes and abuse of power in Guatemala.
The Cobra gains a conscience. He hides in the region where earlier in the novel he chauffeured the nanny. A Mayan woman tells him he’s been given the chance to undo the harm he’s brought into the world. She also gives insight to Jacobo, who returns to the drama in a surprising twist.
The Country of Toó by Rodrigo Rey Rosa is translated from the Spanish by Stephen Henighan and published by Biblioasis. Born and raised in Guatemala City, Rodrigo Rey Rosa has authored five collections of short stories and more than a dozen novels that have been published in sixteen languages. This review first aired on NPR member station WOSU 89.7 FM broadcasting throughout central Ohio. Minor edits adjusted the review for print.
The Longest Chapter 