Poso Wells

May 15, 2018
When a freak accident leads to the death of a Trump-like Ecuadorian politician, a reporter assigned to investigate the incident uncovers shocking and sinister truths about the politician and his cohorts.Opening with a scene of unforgettable absurdism, a campaigning politician has to urinate so badly while giving a speech in a seedy part of Ecuador that he pees his pants, which causes his electrocution. In the wake of his death, Gonzalo Varas, an impoverished journalist living with a failed poet as a roommate, is assigned by his editor to investigate the incident. As Gonzalo receives more and more pressure from his editor to produce a story, he finally, by a stroke of luck, happens upon a strange woman in an underground tunnel who has escaped captivity and is nearly dead, an encounter which soon leads him to uncover a pattern of missing women, a group of eerie blind men, and a conspiracy involving land and mining rights, all of which center around the novel's titular community, a slum sitting atop a network of interconnected tunnels. One part Thomas Pynchon, one part Gabriel García Marquez, and one part Raymond Chandler, Alemán's novel contains mystery, horror, humor, absurdity, and political commentary. Her characters are cartoonishly lovable or hateable, and the world they inhabit is overblown and stylized. Though the novel contains flashes of brilliance (a woman's voice sounds like "crystal clear water falling slowly through yards of blue velvet"), her writing sometimes lapses into cliché and lacks specificity, though it is unclear whether this is her doing or the fault of Cluster's translation. In the end, though the novel never quite finds its footing, Alemán is a good enough storyteller and has a good enough sense of pacing that the story never drags.A concoction of political thriller and absurdist literary mystery that never fails to entertain.

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July 23, 2018
Alemán’s first novel to be translated into English is a wild, successful satire of Ecuadorian politics and supernatural encounters. Shortly before the nation’s 2006 presidential election, an unnamed candidate and 10 of his supporters die via freak electrocution while attempting to drum up support in the small settlement of Poso Wells, leaving land magnate Andrés Vinueza as the sole survivor in line for the presidency. After a group of eyeless, possibly alien men steal Vinueza from a rally, journalist Gonzalo Varas begins to investigate the strange events. A series of hidden tunnels under the settlement leads Varas to Valentina, a recently vanished local. After Vinueza reappears three weeks later, newly devoted to God and flanked by five blind men, Varas, aided by his poet friend Benito and area rabble-rouser Bella, suspects the candidate’s disappearance is connected to Valentina and the growing number of women reported missing in Poso Wells. Alemán’s sleek narrative is bizarre and propulsive, and though the novel’s ramshackle finale may come together a bit fast, Alemán’s singular voice keeps the ride fresh and satisfying.