THE GOBLINS OF EROS

A strange book- following Far From the Customory (1953). It is an unpleasant, difficult, utterly amoral book, written about some people in a Mexican village near Santiago. These people appear first as seen through the eyes of a youth, Eduardo, who has come to bury his grandmother in the place she had left years before. He sees his uncle as crude, mysterious; he finds himself caught up in curious friendships and passionate adventures; and finally he is involved in a minor but violent revolution. The bonds are stronger than he had suspected and he wants to reclaim the rancho where his mother had died. Through one character and another, the whole seamy, irrational story behind the story comes out- until no one is what he seems. Even the doctor- the one appealing person- seems unbalanced, even cruel in his effort to protect the dead woman he had loved. Incest, lust, rape, all are accepted with a casual indifference. In the end Eduardo and Leonora who had loved the doctor in vain are married and leave the village behind them. A horrid book.