Fernando Fuentes' The Death of Artemio Cruz: An Insightful Exploration of Mortality

Leonid Finis: I liked first-person insights and reflections closely combined with a wider narrative. His moral dilemmas, failings, and regrets are masterfully contextualized and embedded within the larger historical and cultural background.
One word of caution - it's not an easy read. It uses modernists literary style (apparently influenced by Joyce) where times and perspectives are deliberately mixed and confused. Importantly, first and third persons are deliberately mixed and correspondingly represent the present (I), and the past (he).

Canada on Jun 01, 2021

Superman: WTF has this author written?!! Now there is a new trend in writing novels which is to make the plot appear complex and the story will be a blast. But even that should have some sense. It is a complete nonsensical book. I couldn't get anything from it. Ridiculous style of writing and while appearing to be mature the author has written in the most immature way. Waste of money. I was about to throw away this book. But now decided to donate it so that the sacrifices made by the trees don't go in vain.

India on Jul 22, 2017

Amazon Customer: Worthy

India on Jun 12, 2017

Forte: カルロスフェンテスの傑作。スペイン語版とあわせて読んで、わからない箇所は英語版を参照して助けてもらっています。メキシコの近代史と社会を反映しており、スペイン語学習者にも大いに参考になるのと思います。

Japan on Feb 05, 2016

popeyethetim: I've read much by other reviewers on this book and a lot seems to focus on it's changes of person, tense and sense. I enjoyed the book immensely, not just for what it is but also for what it represents and also for the debate that it always raises.
I have no problem with the change in viewpoint - from 'I' to 'You' to 'He' - in fact I really enjoyed this chimerical form of being able to say 'look, this is a different viewpoint'. I found this to be really Joycean - or possibly even more like Joyce's compatriot Beckett. I love that sense of dislocation whereby you have to read the novel like stream of consciousness. But Fuentes is neither Joyce nor Beckett (maybe more Beckett-like as he is really trying to make people think without resorting to the tell-mode).
There are so many debates within this book. Debates about 'the revolution', debate between young and old Mexico without even going into the narrative that makes up this book.
Fuentes is a master of conveying things without the reader being aware that he is being worked on. I would sincerely urge those that failed to make it with this book to give it another try, to loosen up your mind and let the book flow over you. It...

United Kingdom on Nov 19, 2012

Uzo Dibia: What happens when an old man contemplates the life he lived when at the foot of death's door?
Carlos Fuentes provides a sharp insight into the mind of the dying patriarch of the Cruz family. The novel is at once a triumph for Latin American writing, and adheres to the fidelity of romance, passion and beautiful use of language writers from that part of the world are known for.

The book opens with Artemio Cruz's reminiscences on past lives and old loves, friends, foes, successes and failures. This make for some beautiful reading. The long narrative technique works very well here, as Fuentes effortlessly shifts between the past and present, like water embracing the sides of a continuously tilting glass.
Artemio Cruz is depicted as a no-nonsense, strong man, shaped by the circumstances of his sordid birth (he was the bastard child of a mulatto slave brought to work in the hacienda), and although we are not given a full historical account, one can only assume that this, and other unpleasant circumstances ,morphed him into the man he eventually became. Whilst he may be seen as crass and unfeeling, one cannot help but have some pity for him. This is a man who has experienced...

United States on Jan 22, 2011

T. M. Teale: I was first attracted to this novel because of the author's reputation as the premier man of of Mexican letters, and Carlos Fuentes' accomplishment with this novel alone is monumental. How could Fuentes have known enough about life to have written it at the age of about 34? Wow! The novel should be read and reread--perhaps in different translations, as one reviewer has recommended. Other reviewers of this novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz, have summarized the plot and action for you; I want to say something about "who" Artemio Cruz is and why we should still care 47 years after the original publication date. Another way of saying it is this: The Death of Artemio Cruz is also the life of Artemio Cruz--and we've got to care because there is so much in this novel about Mexico that the U.S. government should learn, which we cannot learn from a documentary or statistics.

I can't pretend to be an expert on Latin American Literature, (and I've never traveled south of the border), but it seems to me that Artemio Cruz is Mexico--of course, it's more complicated than that metaphor--but you have to read all the way to at least page 267 to understand that Mexico is "a thousand countries...

United States on May 30, 2009

Wordsworth: Artemio Cruz is a man whose impending death compels him to look back over the span of his life to re-live its peak experiences. In a real sense Cruz was more than a man living in Mexico during a time of revolution: he is a microcosm of Mexico itself. I deeply respect and admire the inventive, narrative technique, which in some respects is revolutionary. The switch of narrative voice in its person is daring and works brilliantly to make the narrative come alive. The story line becomes personal and engaging in the first person and yet more objective in the second and third persons. One really gets to know Artemio in the first person narrative segments. The flashbacks intrigued me in the way that Fuentes used changes in time to serve the narrative as they take the reader to high-points and low points of this man's rise from abject poverty and military adventures to his love affairs and rise to power with its attendant material wealth. Cruz is a fascinating literary figure whose human weaknesses are legion but he is roundly and credibly drawn and leaps off the page by virtue of the narrative technique of Fuentes. The translation by Alfred Mac Adam is elegant, poetic, lyrically rich...

United States on Aug 09, 2008