Down the Rabbit Hole — Juan Pablo Villalobos
Tochtli is a boy living a normal life. Normal to him at least. He enjoys wearing hats, looking for new words in the dictionary and learning about the samurai. He lives with his father Yolcaut in the middle of nowhere “for protection,” as well as with his private tutor Mazatzin, two guards, a gardener, a cook, and a room filled with copious amounts of weapons. We start to realize quite soon that Tochtli’s life is not normal and that he, perhaps unconsciously, is aware of it.
Tochtli tells us about his life like a kid trying to sound more adult. Which makes sense because he’s around adults all day everyday, their conversations, their discussions, and their enigmatic phrases, such as the one Yocault says when he sees on the news that some men who were living at a prison in Mexico were sent to live at a prison in the United States: “We’re fucked.”
Between visits from the governor, spontaneous trips using fake passports and pets that actually belong in a zoo, Tochtli brings us along to his world and reminds us how difficult it is at times to understand the reality around us. How easy we get used to things that should not happen, and how sometimes all we have not to fall into despair is humor:
“This was funny, but it was also a little bit true. That’s why I liked this joke so much: because it wasn’t really a joke.”
Down the Rabbit Hole is a short book, but one that packs a punch. A story both sad and funny, filled with the contradictions of living in a country like Mexico: “Sometimes Mexico is a grim country, but sometimes it is a magnificent one.”
This review was originally published in Spanish at Cuaderno Reciclado.
