Tears of the Trufflepig

by Fernando A. Flores

Near future. South Texas. Narcotics are legal and there’s a new contraband on the market: ancient Olmec artifacts, shrunken indigenous heads, and filtered animals—species of animals brought back from extinction to clothe, feed, and generally amuse the very wealthy. Esteban Bellacosa has lived in the border town of MacArthur long enough to know to keep quiet and avoid the dangerous syndicates who make their money through trafficking.

But his simple life starts to get complicated when the swashbuckling investigative journalist Paco Herbert invites him to come to an illegal underground dinner serving filtered animals. Bellacosa soon finds himself in the middle of an increasingly perilous, surreal, psychedelic journey, where he encounters legends of the long-disappeared Aranaña Indian tribe and their object of worship: the mysterious Trufflepig, said to possess strange powers.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Dystopia, Audiobook, Literary Fiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 2019

About the author

Fernando A. Flores was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and raised in South Texas. He is a college dropout, avid film photographer, occasional screenwriter, and makes his living in Austin, Texas, doing all kinds of things.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Olmec colossal heads
”Wikipedia

I’ll probably reread this at some point and read Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas. “A dryly philosophical, colorful, and disorienting thriller about grief, survival, and undead animals”, says the Kirkus reviewer, yeah, okay, that’s close enough.

Reviews:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/s...
https://www.bookpeople.com/book/97803...
https://www.texasobserver.org/beasts-...
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...

Generously provided by

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nominated for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize 2019
In this dystopia, there are three border walls between Mexico and the US, the cartels are holding scientists hostage to make them artificially reproduce strange extinct animals, and the shrunken heads of the local Aranaña tribe are in high demand in the world of organized crime on both sides of the border - yes, it's weird, and that's just the beginning. Enter Esteban Bellacosa, freelance South Texas construction equipment locator and man of all trades. He is a widower who lost his daughter to famine, and his brother has been kidnapped by a cartel who intends to turn him into, well, a shrunken head that can be monetized. Then, journalist Paco Herbert sends Bellacosa to a decadent underground dinner to find out about the reproduced species that are consumed there, and Bellacosa first sees the title-giving Trufflepig, a fictitious (!) animal out of an Aranaña myth that the scientists have brought to life. And then, Bellacosa gets kidnapped by a shady border patrolman and the scientist-hostages hook him up to a Trufflepig so that the animal might reflect his subconsciousness - the narrative goes on it that vein.

So yes, Flores makes Jeff VanderMeer appear like a realist writer - this is absolutely outrageous, and you have to give Flores kudos for throwing something that unusual and wild in our faces. There is a noirish feel about Bellacosa, the lone wolf, and Herbert, the hardboiled investigative journalist. Unlike Bellacosa, I've never been on peyote, but this text sure is delirious, disorienting and hallucinatory. The whole novel is gritty and the narrative moves in unexpected ways, which sometimes can become ennervating and unnecessarily hard to follow.

So while there is plenty so see and to experience in this Southern rollercoaster of a novel, it was frequently too disparate for my taste - when a story arc explodes into my face, this narrative decision must be beneficial to the overall text, but many moves and shifts in this book seemed slightly gratuitous to me, just there to say "hey, I'm edgy". Nevertheless, this is an interesting novel, and Flores is the kind of author who will have a hard time writing a boring book.

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

When pigs fly, Bellacosa thought. That's what the saying used to be, but nowadays we see pigs fly every day. Fat super rich, homicidal, stinking of impunity, greedy for even more power and making the weak suffer. The saying should be, "When pigs fry their own bacon," a voice peeling down from the kitchen's blue wallpaper seemed to respond.

I rarely buy new books, but this one was such a perfect combination of great title + great cover, I had to have it. I only wish I had enjoyed it more. Don't get me wrong - it was a fine novel. I just couldn't get into this strange, vision-questy story of well . . . I don't really know what. If I had to sum up this book in one sentence, I couldn't do it; I'm not even sure what genre it is.

But, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Flores has dreamed up a strange mix of fantasy, and ripped-from-today's headlines reality.

A dozen automatic weapons then pointed at Bellacosa. He raised his arms and said, "I'm an American citizen. I have rights."

A muscular female officer said, "Right. Frontsquad, show this American here his rights."

Two officers approached Bellacosa in shuffles of alligator movements. One of them pressed what looked like an electronic vampire bat to Bellacosa's neck; it bit into his flesh and released a shock that brought Bellacosa to the ground, unconscious and shivering. The officers shackled his hands and feet and carried him into one of the Border Protector vehicles as he convulsed.

I'm giving this four stars; even though I didn't like it, it was well written and thought provoking. Flores is a stellar writer, and I think he's going to be a major, major talent someday. Hope he doesn't let it ruin him . . .

Truffle Pig, the Shepherd of Dreams

by Cody Rauh

[Uriel Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each page of Fernando A. Flores's debut novel, 'Tears of the Trufflepig,' brims with a confection of absurdity and hilarity. In it, Flores places us in near future South Texas where the US has erected a third border wall and Mexican cartels pedal extinct fauna to the ultra-rich. At its heart is Esteban Bellacosa, a throwback to the swashbuckling vaqueros of elderdays, and Gonzo reporter Paco Herbert; both are caught in a conspiracy by these crime syndicates to hijack ancient artifacts, a conspiracy that's also resulted in the disappearance of Bellacosa's own brother.
In what reads like a peyote-fueled fever dream is a stellar debut novel of the highest order; an immaculate rendering of borderland politics, language and spiritualism; a cosmic joyride that is both daring and ambitious.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It wasn’t some monster or cheap science-fiction alien conquest, but people creating all the horror, enslaving one another at all cost in a world where more and more syndicates and absolute power reigned supreme.”

In cities close to the Mexican and US border in southern Texas, science and technology have overtaken morality. Shortly after the year of the world food shortage, which killed off a fifth of the world’s population, and the legalization of drugs in the west,… “filtering”—the artificial production of an organic substance—had been explored to speed up the growth not only of fruits and vegetables but also of animals for corporate farming.” Instead of utilizing this new science to improve the world, syndicates, much like drug cartels, spring up. “[R]enegades, the scientists go on to duplicate and filter a variety of animals classified as extinct, all smuggled out of the country and sold to rich collectors and enthusiasts, bored and eager to show off their wealth.” It seems scruples have stepped aside to allow in the interests of the uber-wealthy, who feast on meals of extinct animals, the ultimate luxury.

The protagonist, Esteban Belacosa sits in juxtaposition to Pacheco, the leader of the biggest syndicate. Both consider themselves men who deal in commodities. However, Pancheco knows no ethical boundaries, while Bellacosta makes an honest living. In an ironic and somewhat humorous twist, Pacheco decides to collect living exotic animals. However, his giant ostriches turn on him and eat him and his family alive. They overrun his compound, in an uprising of nature against man-made things.

With Pacheco’s death, a vacuum is formed for rival syndicates to fill in the power gap, and all hell breaks loose. His friend Paco, a reporter there to write about the syndicates, says “We see people every day just turn into beasts. Exceptions [to the beastly people] get more and more rare by the day, exceptions like you and me, Bellacosa.” So while Bellacosa also deals in commodities, he never loses his scruples, never turns into a beast.

Paco finds along with this story of the synidicates that there has been a systematic effort to erase the culture of the ancient Aranaña Indians. And this is where the story diverges into a little magical realism with the Trufflepig. “The Trufflepig was some kind of mirror. A mirror reflecting who we are as people beyond time and space. A creature that reflects the ugliness of reality and embodies it in its being, by being just the way it is.” The reporter continues, the “Aranaña believed they were living through an age. And the Trufflepig was the deity of that age. They believed that reality and dreams were one and the same, because they were both things that were being perceived and imagined by the same deity.” Scientists try hooking people up to Trufflepigs to get sense of their visions.

The end of the book is confusing, but points us toward the disintegration of the soul that occurs with the syndicates through their meddling with nature and the Trufflepigs. The novel also touches on the eradication of culture by those out to make money instead of admire the culture.

Bellacosa notes that people who live along the border have become bland, neither accepting the US nor the Mexican cultures.

Interestingly, two border walls have gone up with talk of a third, since neither wall effectively stops immigrants from passing back and forth. This seems to be a shaking of the head to the current border wall.

While the novel became confusing, Flores prose is beautiful. It will take a while for this novel to settle in.

[Cathy Sites · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has a lot of unrealized potential....as other readers stated the first 100 pages you just want to give up. By the time the "dinner" comes around you're interested, but where it falls flat throughout are where legends and characters are mentioned and rarely fully developed as the book continues on. Great ideas and a good start, just doesn't hold together overall.

[Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Original 2019 review: Flores and his trufflepig definitely deserved more from me as a reader than the 'read a page, set it down, read a page, set it down, check my phone, fret, and be distracted by everything' lack of attention that was all I've been capable of over the past two weeks. I'm going to read this again someday when I can give it the concentration it deserves and then I'll really be able to tell you all what I strongly suspect, that this book is genius.

2021 re-reading review: I really thought I'd read this before 2019, but I guess it makes sense because Evan was still working here and I think he was the person who gave me this? In any case, I paid attention this time and liked the book quite a bit more because of it. I don't think it's near the genius level I originally suspected but it does have a rueful sort of wackiness that I enjoyed; also it's satisfying to have simply finished something even if it was a re-read.

[Eugene · Rating 5 out of 5]

like a dose, this book sneaks up on you. KIRKUS in surprisingly spot-on namecheckery says: "Warren Ellis and Jeff Vandermeer, with a rustic patina that nods to the likes of Jonathan Lethem’s well-worn detectives..." or this from Harper's: "a cross between Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and a narconovela"

In Tears of the Trufflepig, the metaphor and actuality of the borderlands shimmer together into a vision of haptic, granular, and superbly controlled, convincing reality. A deep dream. A clear-eyed hallucination. Studded with the sweet delayed snap of the nonchalant reveal, cunning details of new worlds―demimondes, hellscapes, mythic lands― bloom naturally from scene to scene. Fernando A. Flores writes like a hard-boiled psychotropic angel.

[jenni · Rating 4 out of 5]

so much to undoubtedly unpack here, but the way this marvelously hallucinogenic novel portrayed and revered each and every female character was by and large the greatest delight.

[cycads and ferns · Rating 3 out of 5]

…he neither liked nor disliked all these Mexicans and Americans living along both sides of the border. He saw them now as one and the same people, both stale imitations of the cultures they were meant to be a part of….The border walls, the filtering syndicates, headless bodies of scientists, shrunken Indian heads— he felt these things were always around even before they'd materialized. It was all the continuous over-flow of the tension that had been boiling for over a century along the border.

[Lilian Jacobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would like to start off by saying that many reviews of this book say it’s confusing, and this is true, but I’d add that this is justified. This novel is a wonderful amalgamation of South Texan/Mexican culture, a thrilling sci-fi/Breaking Bad esque storyline, along with metaphysical and tribal magic sprinkled in. I think Flores does an excellent job at mocking our society’s tendency of replacing one evil with another, as well as expertly addressing systemic issues with ethnicity in the US. He speaks on how elite white people often covet artifacts and adopt practices from other cultures because they’re so far removed from them they find it fascinating. He then proceeds to take this and tack on a Black Mirror type twist (there are in fact, SO MANY TWISTS!!! You will not get bored of this book). Flores also covers issues relating to immigration, handling grief, death, afterlife, I could go on. Tears of the Trufflepig deserves 4.7 stars, but alas GoodReads does not allow a fraction of a star (damn this app).

[Alex O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I loved the weird, futuristic feel to it. I loved the premise. I loved the prose. I will be watching Fernando Flores career with interest.

[David Hefesto · Rating 4 out of 5]

elyunquedehefesto.blogspot.com/2022/0...

Soñamos con una sociedad más justa y equitativa, pero algo nos dice que vamos en dirección opuesta. Los multimillonarios y los poderosos tienen cada vez más dinero y más poder. La clase media tiende a la desaparición y el abismo entre los que han de servir y los que son servidos, llegará a ser insalvable.

Siempre ha habido (y habrá) un colectivo que tiende a moverse en las sombras, que desea ganar (y a veces lo consigue) su puesto entre los más ricos. Gente que no se conforma con lo que la suerte les ha dado y no duda en saltarse todos los parámetros éticos y legales para conseguirlo. Suelen seguir metodologías parecidas a las de las grandes empresas: analizan lo que el mercado demanda y tratan de proporcionarlo antes que nadie ocupando así una posición predominante en el sector. Poco importa si hablamos de drogas, prostitución, armas o cualquier otro negocio tan rentable como ilegal.

No es descabellado pensar que en un futuro donde la mayoría no tengan ningún poder adquisitivo, las organizaciones más turbias se centren en satisfacer los caprichos de los más adinerados. Y ya sabemos que no basta con ser el más acaudalado, hay que demostrarlo. La ciencia, mediante la clonación, está a un solo paso de poder traer de vuelta a miles de especies extintas (aunque su esperanza de vida sea mínima) ¿Sería ético hacerlo? En realidad, poco importa eso; si alguien de la élite económica encontrase glamouroso exhibirse con una criatura de otro tiempo, siempre habría personas dispuestas a proporcionársela. ¿Imagináis mayor demostración de poder que pasearse con un dodo o un bucardo? Alguien que pudiese hacerlo le estaría diciendo al mundo que todo está a su alcance. Y si se convirtiese en moda y no fuese algo suficientemente exclusivo, ¿Por qué no dar vida a un animal mitológico?


Esteban Bellacosa es un hombre de frontera, un conseguidor (normalmente de maquinaria) para empresarios de la zona. Su nacionalidad estadounidense le permite moverse libremente a través de los dos muros que delimitan la frontera con México y, tras el fallecimiento de su esposa e hija, vive sin objetivos ni metas.
Es un tiempo extraño el que le ha tocado vivir, una época en la que los cárteles, tan crueles como siempre, se dedican al filtrado de animales en vez de al narcotráfico y no dudan en capturar a científicos para esclavizarlos en sus proyectos. Una época en la que el comercio de cabezas reducidas de indígenas compite con el de obras de arte. En un contexto así, puede que el único camino que le quede para recuperar su propia humanidad sea encontrar a su hermano secuestrado.


Fernando A. Flores ha escrito una novela de las que discurren sin prisa, de las que horadan poco a poco la mente del lector y transitan por ella hasta inundarla completamente. Una historia dura e impredecible. Distópica, fantástica y apocalíptica que transmite el terror atávico derivado de la oscuridad del alma humana. La aventura no es frenética como promete la sinopsis, de hecho, le cuesta coger inercia. No cierra con el final, sino con el epílogo. Propone un infierno en la tierra tan absorbente como estimulante, y contiene ideas que pueden dejar secuelas en nosotros.

Os propongo un viaje único. Acercaos a la frontera. Allí la gente es diferente y la vida apenas tiene valor. Seréis testigos del choque de culturas y de la decadencia moral de los reyes del primer mundo. Pero también encontraréis el lugar en el que la ciencia y los conocimientos ancestrales se dan la mano y podréis, tras una cena irrepetible, veros reflejados en el mundo de los sueños gracias a las Lágrimas del cerdo trufero.

[Sonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
totally original and unforgettable. this is my third fernando flores book and while i think his absurdist sorta trippy style fits most seamlessly in short story form, this was so well-done. we follow slouchy but good-hearted bellacosa as he unravels the mystery and horrors of a scientific experiment-turned-crime syndicate situation. very #texascore and heartbreaking and funny all at the same time

[Zoey · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic book. It was bizarre and chaotic, but in the best way. There were so many intertwining plot lines from the filtering syndicates, the disappearance of the Aranaña people, the shrunken head market, Bellacosa’s personal tragedies, Oswaldo’s kidnapping, Paco Herbert’s journalism, the thievery of the Olmec heads, and so much more.

I also noticed there was a lot of commentary on the exploitation of indigenous people, as well as the issue of border disputes between America and Mexico. I think bringing up so many real conflicts made this book that much more impactful.

Additionally, the idea of recreating extinct animals or animals that never existed was so fascinating. Science was turned into a capitalistic endeavor, and something that should have been wondrous became unnatural and disturbing. This novel really takes apart just how many people are involved in the production and distribution of unsavory goods. It makes you wonder how they can live with themselves for kidnapping students that don’t even have enough knowledge to assist and how they can cut off people’s heads and still sleep well at night.

I definitely recommend this book.

[William Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the writing in this novel and it drew me immediately into its pages. A Texan-Mexican-Indian character walks around an old shack he thinks might have been his birthplace:

"The sky was different than it appeared from inside, giving the impression time had never changed in the shack, and the rooms where we are born keep giving birth to us forever. ... Bellacosa got out of the old Jeep and climbed an embankment of dry ferns onto the property. There were moaning whirlwind pillars and tufts of raisin-eyed, pockmarked chickens clucking around." (pp.4-5)_

I don't even know what "pockmarked chickens" are, but the description tickled me. This is good writing.

Alas, it leads nowhere and I soon tired of one well-turned phrase after another. No strong characters emerged. No plot developed. The novel is only a concatenation of well-rendered scenes. Thematically, it evokes border life with a noir tone, exploring drug trafficking, gangsters and violence, political corruption, economic excess, all with a dose of indigenous mythology. Oh yes, and a touch of sci-fi because the criminal cartels have kidnapped scientists who know how to synthesize organic animals (maybe they started with the Impossible Burger?) and somehow "forced" their captives to reconstitute animals that have been long-extinct. Why? So the ultra-rich can eat them. Why would the ultra-rich want to do that? Because you can't.

The eponymous trufflepig is beyond extinct. It never existed. It is a purely mythical beast, but the amazing scientists create them anyway (though entirely off-stage. The "sci-fi" component is executed by hand-waving). By the time the trufflepig appears, the reader has grown accustomed to the disjunctive narrative of events and its appearance is acceptable within a context of magical realism. The pig is a slightly humorous being, but its glycerine tears recall sorrowful religious icons dripping tears for a lost past, lost culture, lost humanity. The novel evokes several touching moods in that allusive way.

The writing is long on narrative exposition, which seems to be resurgent these days, a disorienting trend. I painstakingly trained myself to write in character-revealing dialog and plot-developing dramatic scenes. Reliance on narrative exposition, which was common in mid-twentieth-century literature, seems incommunicative to me now.

Almost every character in the novel gives a long speech, the protagonist listening silently, no dialog. That's how the story, such as it is, moves along, and that's also why the characters seem like animation puppets rather than interesting people. That style of writing works for genres like mystery, where plot is king and characters are indeed game pieces. This novel breaks genre with historical and cultural allusion and by adding magical realism, but not in the art of storytelling. It is an example of writing for the sake of writing, enjoyable in small doses, like poetry, but doesn't add up to a coherent story or a strong character. Maybe the novel form is moving on without me.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a sneaking suspicion this will be the most impactful book I read this year and I am writing this in the first week of January...

Flores’ writing rode the line of challenging and engaging without becoming muddy or self indulgent, which I’ve noticed is difficult to accomplish in this genre. I feel this book should be considered a modern classic in frontera/borderlands literature.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt on the edge of my seat, dying to turn the next page while reading a book. The tension built and released in all the right places. I was hooked in so quickly. This was a masterpiece of pacing, imagery, metaphor, and the interweaving of folklore with social commentary to create something simultaneously brilliant while still approachable.

Flores has such clear command of the magical realism and science fiction genres. I cannot wait to read more of his work, and to reread this book so that I can sit with it a second time. I’m usually not much of a re-reader, but this book was full of layered nuance so a second pass feels exciting and necessary to get the most out of it. A first read for the pleasure of immersing in the story, and every reread after to spend time digesting all of the layers and hidden gems. I truly consider wanting to reread a book as my highest compliment.

I definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a magical realism/science fiction read that has something to say.

[Carly Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars for this fascinating, creative, and very trippy novel. It is set in the future on the Texas/Mexico border. In this future, there are three huge border walls. There was a global food shortage so scientists were pushed to develop ways to make fake plants and animals. Then Mexico gangs started kidnapping scientists and forcing them to recreate extinct animals. A large black market developed for these animals for food. The main character, Esteban Bellacosa, finds his way to one of these selective black market meals and finds a mythical animal from a Central American culture called a truffle pig. Then more weirdness happens...

Flores’ writing is engaging and strangely beautiful. It reminded me of We Cast A Shadow in the way it used a disturbing future setting to remark on current cultural issues.

Very glad I read this! Can’t say I really enjoyed it - it was REALLY trippy - but it will stick with me.

[TJ Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I like the idea of this book and what it’s saying more than I enjoyed reading it. I am also trying to not just give every book a 4 star review hahah.

I loved the world here, Flores does an incredible job of creating a lived in world without over explaining some stuff and allowing for some imagination. The story was interesting at points, and the exploration into what a border town is like and what it could be was also cool.

I think I just got stuck sometimes, and I wasn’t always entirely hooked on it. Maybe I tried to rush it too much or was expecting something different.

Maybe being a little harsh, definitely still a good read that I would recommend!

3.5/5

[Vuk Trifkovic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it. Like a futuristic narcocorrido. Totally could see this being a Cohen brothers movie.

Sure, it has its flaws like the deus ex machina ending.

[CJ Alberts]

DNF fifty pages in couldn’t focus lol

[Michael B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let’s give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume he had some good intentions in the writing of this novel. If so, who am I to say he missed the mark? How can we be sure that it wasn’t my furtive reading that missed the mark?

I almost gave up on this book several times through the first 50 pages. I didn’t though. I preserved in the hopes that there would be some pay off for me by the end. My expected payoff did not materialize.

But sometimes, when I read books that start to annoy me, I become angry. This book did not make me angry. Occasionally I smiled, like when in this near future and very imaginary South Texas landscape there is talk of building a third border wall, because, you know, cultures can be so dangerous when they clash up against one another, each vying for supremacy.

Our hero/narrator is one Estaban Bellacosa (“beautiful thing”). He smokes Herzegovina Flor and lives a somewhat lonely existence having tragically buried his wife and daughter before the story begins. He was once a silkscreen artist until the criminal syndicates shut that down. Now he is a “go for” employed by various enterprises to locate heavy machinery where needed in places just south of the border. The time is the near future where a new technology called filtering can recreate species once thought to be extinct. Drugs are now legal yet criminal syndicates still run roughshod over the land and profit by feeding the peculiar tastes of the very wealthy.

The style is dream-like, perhaps inspired by the mythical or extinct animal named in the title - the truffle-pig - a creature of many talents having to do with very inspired dreams. But you know how dreams sometimes do not make a lot of sense, often even to the dreamer? I am certain that in order for dreams to appear interesting they must first be filtered through a process of interpretation wherein the narrator attempts to wrest meaning from the bizarre elements of the dream by piecing them together in some plausible manner. Prior to this, the dream details could become tedious.

Have you ever been cornered at a party, let's say, by a person insistent on telling you their dream? Perhaps the dream teller is struggling to understand the dream and looks to you for help? But you are in a lesser position with regards to interpretation than the teller of dreams, so the details all add up to a giant bore-fest that leaves you searching for a drink even though you swore off alcohol two decades earlier. I fear that my dreams are only interesting to me, and other people's dreams are a painful imposition I would not pay to experience.

Perhaps in the last pages of this book - the last four or five pages to be precise - does the author attempt to weave some meaning into the previous 300 pages. These pages are more grounded than the rest of the book and hold out some promise of a pleasant conclusion. I find myself asking the author, if you are capable of accomplishing this in the final pages, why not bring some of this skill into the earlier parts of the book? But this is the author’s choice and who am I to suggest it might have been more enjoyable if done differently? If I feel that strongly about it I could write my own book. We are in the author’s hands when we submit to read his or her work. To his credit, at least I finished it, skimming through only the most tedious and repetitive elements. I apologize should the author have poured his heart and soul into this work, it is just that it not not speak to this particular reader.

[Stefanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is definitely something powerful and strange. It takes "magical realism" to a whole different level. I loved the border vibes, the analogies of "filtering" (genetic copies/editing) with the drug trade, and the author, Flores, can write a beautiful sentence. But I have to say, this meandering story left me meandering away from it...for a full three months. It was only because it is so weird and singular a tale that I was motivated to come back and finish it.

The story centers on Esteban Bellacosa, an older man in his 50s with a knack for sourcing things for folks. He's alone in this world because his wife and young daughter have died, and is estranged from his brother Oswaldo. He's just trying to get by day by day, and in the way of many border stories, inadvertently gets wrapped up in the activity of criminal syndicates - but not moving drugs. Instead, in this world, the ability to do genetic editing has led to the recreation of extinct and even fictional animals - which are then made into meals, because of course that's what rich people want from this technology.

Bellacosa gets roped into working with a journalist, Paco Herbert, to try and figure out just what's going on here, and who's doing it. Some of the shape of this story will be very familiar: it's always the people struggling, both in Mexico and on the U.S. side of the border, that seem to most suffer from the power struggle over new technologies. Flores in particular focuses on a (fictional) indigenous tribe, the Aranana tribe, as both victims of what's happening, but also offering a potential alternative view of reality through their myths about eras and change.

If all of this sounds a little hard to digest, well, it is. I will admit I am not entirely at home with magical realism. And I often struggled to connect point A to point B in this story, as lots is implied or left unsaid directly.

And yet vibes, you know, man? If you are looking for a slice of life-type fiction with an occasionally wild psychedelic bent set among (mostly) people of color on the U.S./Mexico border - this is it. I can confidently say I haven't read any other books like it.

[Casey ✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.25- this books is what happens when you cross old school magical realism with modern-day drug cartels and black market antiquities along the Mexican American border.

For the first half of this book, I was prepared to give it a 3/5 stars, but the last third of this book is a 5/5, so if you’re thinking of DNFing, don’t. This is for fans of bleak worlds like Tender is the Flesh where one terrible system of crime and violence is replaced with another. In this world, drug cartels have abandoned drug running (now that narcotics are legal) and have begun kidnapping scientists to employ a new technology that brings back extinct animals for them to chop up and exploit in the black market. But what happens when they try to bring back a creature that never existed? Something mythological? This story is that - sitting at the crossroad of myth and science.

The language feels stiff and odd at first, but for me it eventually felt like someone old and wise was reading a story to me. The strangeness was excellent, and the huge shift in the plot really brought it all together. I highly recommend this for fans of weird little books that don’t really offer a full story, but a host of ideas and feelings. The more I think about it, in fact, the more I like it. I started this review thinking I’d give it a 4/5, but now I think I’m going up to 4.25

[Tala · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are so many words I can use to describe this book: it's new, it's confusing, it made me think about our society today and how so much is wrong with it. All the out-of-the-box ideas in the book feel so realistic and things that would actually happen if we existed in this world.

I know some say the ending was bad/weird/readers needed more, but I think it was perfect. It was ambiguous like the rest of the book, and it showed that Bellacosa was the main character of the book, but not of the story. The story was much bigger than him and he was just a small side-character that got to interact with the larger aspects of the story. He is part of the story, but is not the protagonist of it. I loved it. It worked really well.

I got the chance to speak with the author, too, and he was awesome and the way he thought when creating this story was amazing. It added so much more depth to the story. I would recommend it for people who like more ambiguous stories that are creepy/mysterious but still feel realistic.

[Jesús · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this novel, a middle-aged purchasing agent gets caught up in the violence and paranoia of the Texas-Mexico border. Set in a dystopian alternate reality or near future, the cartels competing over the illegal drug and human trafficking trades have transformed into syndicates now fighting for control of new illicit markets in indigenous artifacts, genetically engineered animals, and shrunken human heads.

Without ever seeming absurd or impossible, Flores’s vision is a nightmarish fictional parallel to the even more nightmarish realities that currently characterize Mexico, the US, and the border regions. It’s Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 meets Roberto Bolaño’s 2666.

[ExtraGravy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gets weird, in wonderful ways. At one point our main character is taken by a cartel and forced into an experiment where he's made to take pills of peyote while linked with a possibly supernatural animal, that can't move and is shaped like a football - the titular Trufflepig.

This book also reflects on family, age, loss, inequality, and friends, and its for this that I would recommend it to others, there is depth and humanity here.

Cool, yes, hell yes, its the coolest shit I've read in awhile. I like this new author (this is his second book) and will auto-order whatever he puts out next.

[Huijia Yu · Rating 4 out of 5]

- A little strange, merging a couple of genres- reminded me of search history (young^(tm) vibes)
- Maybe I just didn’t get it but I wanted the critiques to be sharper and/or the mythology to be more grandiose
- Overall very fun! Interesting to think about it wrt 2666, another border novel and an inspiration for this one
- From an interview with the author:“In this book, I knew there had to be the story of the Aranaña people, and I didn’t feel comfortable with researching existing indigenous cultures or histories, or anything like that. (…) I’m interested in fiction as research into the subconscious, and I really wanted to dig in and discover what the Trufflepig is. I’m still always learning about the Trufflepig, to this day.”

[Nabila · Rating 4 out of 5]

im mad. i cant tell if its because i want a sequel or because of the ending. a little confusing at the beginning because of the world building but incredibly interesting and by the end, super engaging. i did not want to put this book down. immigration, greed, capitalism, human loneliness, this book encapsulates so much and feels like one the first incredibly unique books ive read in a while. would highly recommend.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a strange and wonderful novel-- set in a somewhat distant but still pretty recognizable future where someone created a machine that allows for all needs to be met-- food, but also drugs and odd extinct species, the story takes place on the Texas-Mexico border, around McAllen. There's the return of a lost Indian tribe, some narco-gang violence, some weird foods and weird cigarettes to smoke, all wrapped up in this strange conspiracy that maybe explains everything about why people today feel so ill at ease or maybe it shouldn't be taken seriously at all.

I don't think this book and it's tone are unprecedented, but just kind of uncommon. There are maybe shades on Tim Robbins here, and a dash of Auster ca Moon Palace or maybe the movie version of Inherent Vice, with a Latin flavor. I don't think Flores sticks the landing, but there's more than enough of interest between the covers to make up for that.