Reading 1001 discussion

The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - Alvaro Mutis.


Reviews here, please.

Rating: 3 Stars


I'm afraid I didn't appreciate this as I should, since my rating is far lower than the average GR rating. Although good overall, and in a lot of ways, brilliant, I found it tedious and overlong. The book is over 700 pages long, but it reads like a book twice the size due to the small font and huge paragraphs. I started to lose interest after the second book.

The story is told through 7 interconnected smaller "books" which were originally published in Spanish as separate books. The main character, Maqroll the Gaviero, is a sailor and wanderer who travels throughout various landscapes around the globe and the adventures that ensue. In this regard, the character is reminiscent of a more modern and serious version Don Quixote. In fact, the book and its characters are reminiscent of a conglomerate of characters and aspects of many works of literature.

Book 1 - The Snow of the Admiral - We learn about the main character as he begins his voyage through the narrator, a man who finds Maqroll's diary inside of another book in a Spanish bookstore. The main story takes place on a river through the jungle. The descriptions of the landscape are beautiful and poetic, which makes sense, since this book was inspired by a poem written earlier by the author.
Book 2 - Ilona Comes with the Rain - When Maqroll's ship is taken, he is forced to stay on land in Panama. The story takes place mainly in a brothel in Panama City. We observe his friendship with Ilona, an old acquaintance. Overall, this is yet another beautifully descriptive installment.
Book 3 - Un Bel Morir - Only one not written in 1st person, which probably initiated my withdrawal from the larger story. The aging Maqroll visits a small town on a river in the Andes mountains, a more familiar landscape to that of his childhood.
Book 4 - The Tramp's Steamer's Last Port of Call - Maqroll's steamship visits various ports of call throughout the world. And yet another beautiful woman takes center stage, as we see in the other books.
Book 5 - Amirbar- Narrated by a friend of Maqroll. Takes place in California and a goldmine Peru. Maqroll encounters yet another beautiful woman.
Book 6 - Abdul Bashur, Dreamer of Ships - Abdul Bashur is Maqroll's alter ego. Takes place mainly in the Mediterranean. This one didn't hold my interest.
Book 7 - Triptych on Sea and Land - This book looks back and three key stories/experiences in Maqroll's life. These stories all have an impact on his character and made him who he is.

Diane wrote: "Rating: 3 Stars


I'm afraid I didn't appreciate this as I should, since my rating is far lower than the average GR rating. Although good overall, and in a lot of ways, brilliant, I found it tediou..."
I own this one but keep putting if off because of the length and the font is really small and dense at 700 pages.

I never finished this but loved what I read - it’s completely different and completely bizarre. It’s one of those books that is easy to get lost in.

I had this in two volumes: Maqroll: Three Novellas : The Snow of the Admiral/Ilona Comes With the Rain/Un Bel Morir and The Adventures of Maqroll: Four Novellas : Amirbar/the Tramp Steamer's Last Port of Call/Abdul Bashur, Dreamer of Ships/Triptych on Sea and Land. I gave the first one 4 stars and the second one 3 stars.

I found Maqroll an engaging character and enjoyed the descriptions of many places I had never heard of, along with some I had (he's scathing about Brighton and the English!).

I read the two volumes over two months with about two weeks between them. I think it would have been better to read the stories separately with bigger gaps between them, because they did come to seem very similar after a while, even though some of the later stories bring other characters to the fore.

I gave it 4 stars largely for the way in which Mutis built a whole world and many lives for Maqroll. Not all the stories are equally gripping but all of them bring another layer highlighting Maqroll's perseverance and his despair as he wanders through the ports of the world, from near disaster to complete disaster, attempting to create a death without regrets. Although I very much appreciated the fact that although Maqroll had little faith in mankind, he did have deep deep friendships and loves in which the bond did not suffer from years of not seeing each other. He always loved and left his female companions but he was also honest about the fact that he would.
The deep loves and friendship jarred by the fact that Maqroll largely travels alone or at least by the end is alone and the fact that many of the stories are not sea stories but take place on hilltops, ports, mines, rivers, swamps and harbors cause a further sense of displacement.
Maqroll does not have much power of judgement or discrimination when it came to making decisions about what to do next and he always went from failure to failure because he appeared to be as driven by the love of risk as by the lure of a possible success. To quote: "Maqroll always acted on the conviction that everything was already hopelessly lost". Our last story highlighted an attachment to the living that Maqroll did not fully realize he was capable of, and even here it is an exercise in learning to suffer through that attachment to loss.
The book is full of wonderful quotes but I liked this one in particular:
"He thought the real tragedy of aging lay in the fact that an eternal boy still lives inside us unaware of the passage of time"

Reason read: Reading 1001, 4th q 2023.
Well, I am glad to have finally read this book that has been on my virtual shelf since 2012. I was intimidated by the size of the book and the font size but overall I found it easier to read that I had anticipated. At times I was reminded of such books as Don Quixote. I also noted the mention of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The other is definitely a part of the story and in his way is showing how he developed this character. It is a collection of novellas but it does work to make them one novel. It is hinted that Maqroll has died but I don't think the author actually gave us details so like Sherlock Holmes he could be resurrected. Fate and death are strong themes of the book. I felt the male and female characters were treated equally. It will not be a book that I want to reread.

The book setting feels like it is in the past but it really isn't. It often is on boats or in ports or rivers. The character travels over the world. It explores friendship, romance and deception, and poverty. Gaviero is the ship’s lookout, the sailor tasked with sitting atop the masts scanning the horizon. Maqroll is always looking out on the future. He is surrounded by various friends that he loses through death.

I rated it 3.2 stars

Like many here, I also gave this one 3 stars. There were some interesting parts to it that tapped in successfully to the fantasy of ultimate freedom and the adventure promised by the age of sail (and this works as a more modern age of sail novel). The feeling of being drawn into a beautiful solitude also permeates some of the stories in a way that is captivating. But, not all of the tales were equally fascinating to me, and I did find myself drifting out of focus a few times while reading.

This collection of novellas took me a long time to read not only because of its length but because there were so many references to places that were unknown to me so I was constantly consulting Google maps to marvel at the photos of places I was unfamiliar with such as Uranda, or Valdivia or Bizerte or Üskūdar. It was like Worldle on steroids. And then the references to characters like Guidoriccio da Fogliano or Erzebet Bathory of whom I had never heard. I found the novellas more compelling and stimulating the more that I read. I thought the first story, The Snow of the Admiral the most opaque, which makes sense when I realised that it began as a prose poem. What a fascinating character Maris was! His life as a peripatetic oil company executive is mirrored in that of the narrator, who attended conferences in Helsinki, for example. Maqroll, like his author, was a citizen of the world, who made interesting journeys from one obscure location to another. He made deep friendships with a variety of characters whose paths crossed unexpectedly, and whose relationships were renewed, usually over many drinks. He maintained relationships with many women, despite having no intention to remain in one place, but was completely blindsided by his love for his best friend’s child. I thought this the most wonderful collection of adventures and gave it five stars.

My rating: 3 stars

Even though starting with beautiful poetical language and philosophical thinking of a solitary man, it took me ages to read. My rating went down from first fantastic impressions of first couple of novellas to a slightly disappointing description-only of events in final ones.

*** 1/2

Right within the first few pages, you cannot escape remarking the similarity in writing style with another, more famous Colombian writer. While Garcia Marquez usually dealt comically with unstable political regimes and impossible love stories, Mutis focuses on a cast of drifting characters, living on the edge of legality and craftiness, sharing strong friendship bonds and fleeting affairs of the heart. This set of novellas centres on Maqroll the Gaviero who we often find on a dodgy cargo ship or in an obscure seaport, hopping from one desperate adventure to the other. His most frequent companions, Abdul Bashur and Ilona Grabowska, are more solid anchor points in his turbulent life than their ferrous version. The first novella is somewhat depressing and reminiscent of the movie Fitzcarraldo; others, like Ilona comes with the rain and Un bel morir are action-laden, but heart-wrenching. Not reaching the same heights as Garcia Marquez, but still solid reading nonetheless.

These stories about the wanderers Maqroll ("The Gaviero") and his friend Abdul Bashur are four of the seven stories/novellas of the full collection "The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll", which is listed in "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die". I don't believe I've ever read a novel that mentioned so many varied locations around the world. I had to look some of the cities up to find what countries they are in. Excellent adventure tales very well written and quite deserving of its inclusion in the list.