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Dec 06, 2016JCLChrisK rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Life is hard enough to make sense of for an average seven-year-old, but it's even more so for Tochtli. He has spent his entire, spoiled life in relative isolation ("I know maybe thirteen or fourteen people") in the remote mansion of his father, who is a very rich and powerful international drug lord; and a relatively high percentage of those people in his life are "mute"--only around the boy, one assumes, for the sake of self-preservation; you can't accidentally insult someone you don't talk to. Totchli's narration is full of musings based on his highly unusual circumstances. It's apparent his father has taught him to always be macho--never be a "faggot"--and all about the business of making corpses. It seems he's largely had to figure out everything else on his own. He is obsessed with hats, samurai, beheadings (historical execution styles is one of his main criteria for evaluating the worthiness of different nations), and the dictionary ("Some of the difficult words I know are: sordid, disastrous, immaculate, pathetic, and devastating;" all of which he uses constantly and excessively). His most recent obsession is adding a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus to his private zoo. Through Tochtli's eyes, we get a peek into a world of hit men, prostitutes, dealers, servants, and corrupt politicians. Yet, even with all of that, he sees it all through a lens of innocence and wonder--one that Villalobos uses effectively as a method of critique. His telling of events is equal parts amusing, disturbing, sordid, and devastating. And this very short, fast-reading book is uniquely entertaining.