Status Updates From El otoño del patriarca

Letitia corrupted; the general’s bride wins concessions for the church but then becomes so replete with the general’s power that her distant family exploits it, the churches exploit it, and the people come to hate her, so her and their son are assassinated by a pack of wild dogs, and he finds himself exploited by a man who has taken the desire for vengeance and twisted the power around himself.

The fourth segment details the death of the general’s mother, resulting in—ultimately—nothing less than the obliteration of all faiths except the cult of his mother, a way of covering up for the initial exploitation of her death, dovetailed with his “one love” Leticia Nazareno, a nun who he sends out—with all the other clergy—naked, only to trigger her abduction and imprisonment in his mansion.

The next section introduced Manuela Sánchez, a poor but beautiful girl who finds herself the target of the General’s befuddled amors, and starts to develop the horrified thought patterns of the people who he makes direct contact with, whose lives are forever altered by the godlike power that surrounds him, and so Manuela is rescued through a divine intercession during a total eclipse.

This book isn’t slow but it’s exhausting. Each section is a single paragraph of stream of consciousness remembrances, the first one detailing the General’s “second” death and recounting the “first”, that of his double, and how he came to have a double and how the double had come to die and how dissatisfied he was when he saw just how the nation would react to his own passing.