An Orphan World

October 26, 2020
Colombian writer Caputo’s transfixing debut explores the poverty, sexuality, and community found in a hardscrabble neighborhood. The nameless young adult narrator lives with his inventive, hopeful father in a threadbare apartment. While the father dreams up new ways to make money—such as turning their home into a “Talking House” using a tape recording of his voice, or opening a late-night snack shop—the narrator seduces strangers online and recounts his first experience at a gay bathhouse, continuously searching for physical connection and escape. After a homophobic massacre at a bar, many of the narrator’s friends move away, but he and his father stay behind. Flashbacks flesh out the narrator’s relationship with his father, as when, for instance, the father took inspiration from cave paintings to draw on the walls of their unfurnished, undecorated apartment. Each scene has a dreamlike quality, and the father and son’s abject poverty comes through in careful detail, never slipping into the maudlin. As a late stretch of prosperity shows the protagonists in a new light, it’s hard not to expect the other shoe to drop. Caputo’s arresting novel hits hard. Agent: Víctor Hurtado Rodríguez, VicLit Agency.

December 15, 2020
In an unnamed Latin American city, the bond between a son and his father is tested by poverty and violence. The novel's nameless narrator and his quirky, puerile father are on the brink of utter destitution. Though the father remains optimistic about their financial situation, his various moneymaking schemes--such as turning their home into a "Talking House" using tape recordings of his dramatic interpretations of household items--fail miserably and leave the two penniless, with no option other than to pawn off their belongings and move to a different neighborhood. Meanwhile, the narrator is coming into his own sexual power, talking to men on Chat Roulette and pursuing casual sexual encounters in bathhouses and gay clubs. A homophobic massacre in the local bar district prompts a sudden exodus of many community members and friends, though the narrator and his father don't have the option or desire to leave. Meanwhile, tensions between the two grow as they run out of money entirely, the father becoming more silent and withdrawn as the son tries to find solace in the club scene and has flashbacks to victims of the massacre. A spell of luck finds the two working at a haunted house attraction in an amusement park, but how long before all that slips through their fingers? Narrated with irreverence, wit, and arresting attention to detail, the novel is structured so that the narrator is constantly oscillating between the narrative present and his memories, creating a poignant and mosaiclike impression of his childhood and coming-of-age in abject conditions. Moving and, at times, disquieting: a piercing exploration of poverty, eroticism, and love.

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