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    The Neruda Case: A Novel
    The Neruda Case: A Novel
    The Neruda Case: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Neruda Case: A Novel

    Written by Roberto Ampuero

    Narrated by Robertson Dean

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Roberto Ampuero's novels starring the wonderfully roguish Cayetano Brule are an international sensation. In The Neruda Case, listeners are introduced to Cayetano as he takes on his first case as a private eye. Set against the fraught political world of pre-Pinochet Chile, Castro's Cuba, and perilous behind-the-Wall East Berlin, this mystery spans countries, cultures, and political ideas, and features one of literature's most beloved figures-Pablo Neruda.Cayetano meets the poet at a party in Chile in the 1970s. The dying Neruda recruits Cayetano to help him solve the last great mystery of his life. As Cayetano fumbles around his first case, finding it hard to embrace the new inspector identity foisted upon him, he begins to learn more about Neruda's hidden agenda. Neruda sends him on a whirlwind expedition around the world, ending back in Chile, where Pinochet's coup plays out against the final revelations of their journey.Evocative, romantic, and full of intrigue, Ampuero's novel is both a glimpse into the life of Pablo Neruda as death approaches and a political thriller that unfolds during the fiercely convulsive end of an era.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 30, 2012
    ISBN9781452678924
    The Neruda Case: A Novel
    Author

    Roberto Ampuero

    Roberto Ampuero is an internationally bestselling, award-winning author. He has published twelve novels in Spanish, and his works have been translated around the world. The Neruda Case is his first novel published in English. Born in Chile, Ampuero is a professor of creative writing at the University of Iowa and currently serves as Chile's ambassador to Mexico. He lives in Mexico City and Iowa City.

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    Reviews for The Neruda Case

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    • 5/5
      Yay, it is here in my hot little hands, waiting to be read.

      In the middle of another book, but soon. It does look very good. (this was a first reads win)

      So, rushed through previouss books to read this. It is such a multilayered and interesting book, by turns witty and suspenseful. I used the word "sly" midway in my status updates, but it is also nostalgic, and audacious, taking the poet and looking at his life through the women he loved or betrayed, real and fictional, and looking at the period through which he lived, the politics and posturings, the succession of disguises people don...for fun, for love, for survival. And finally...very strangely moving. I liked it a great deal.
    • 4/5
      Had I done my homework as I usually do when I come across a new author, I would have learned that Roberto Ampuero is the author of an entire series featuring detective Cayetano Brulé. Beginning in 1993 with ¿Quién mató a Cristián Kustermann? (Who Killed Christian Kustermann?) Brulé has been involved in several cases; The Neruda Case is the latest to be written but it seems to be a prequel that explains how Brulé got his start in the detective biz. To be brutally honest, as I sat down to read this book, I was concerned that having Pablo Neruda as a character in a detective novel might be a cheap ploy. Although the main character spends a lot of time and energy traveling around and pursuing answers on Neruda[s behalf, the book turns out to be an homage of sorts to the Nobel-winning poet rather than your standard detective novel. It's also a commentary on the betrayal and death of ideals.The author notes that as a boy he lived near Neruda's home La Sebastiana in Valparaíso, where "on three separate occasions, I went to La Sebastiana, in my school uniform and carrying my briefcase full of notebooks, and stood at the door to the poet's garden..." All I wanted to do was to talk to the poet. But all three times I was petrified...not daring to knock and ask to enter the realm where Neruda dwelt with his secrets." Now, Ampuero’s Cayetano Brulé has the honor of entering that house, where the author’s “boyhood shyness” kept him from doing the same.Sitting in the Cafe del Poeta in Valparaiso one day in 1990, Cayetano Brulé sees a photo of Pablo Neruda on the back of his menu and flashes back to his very first case back in the 70s, “the most closely guarded secret of his life,” that began at party his wife Ángela had made him attend at the home of the city’s mayor. Not feeling like mingling with the bigwigs, Brulé hides out in the library. His peace is shattered when another man walks into the room and they begin talking. It is only when Ángela comes in to tell the stranger that he’s wanted at the party that Cayetano realizes he’s been spending time with Pablo Neruda, who invites him to his home at La Sebastiana. It isn’t long until Brulé is welcomed into Neruda’s home that the poet gets to the point of the invitation: he is dying of cancer, he’s seeking an oncologist, Dr. Ángel Bracamonte, and he wants Cayetano to do some detective work to locate him. After a trip to Mexico city that produces more questions than answers, Neruda explains the real reason behind his search: it seems that Bracamonte’s wife, Beatriz, was once one of the poet’s many lovers; he needs to know if the daughter she gave birth to is his. Time is running out -- and Neruda, plagued by his memories of all the women he's betrayed in the name of poetry, wants to know for sure before the end comes. Cayetano’s search will take him from Mexico to Cuba, to East Germany and Bolivia where he realizes that the utopian ideals promised by revolution have all but collapsed and have become something else entirely. It will also place him in the company of some well-known figures of the times, including Neruda’s friend Salvador Allende, whose tenure as president of Chile is on its last legs.If you want to look at this book simply as the series prequel that explains how Cayetano Brulé first got into the private eye business, there are a couple of entertaining moments: Neruda’s advice to Brulé about using the novels of Georges Simenon as a guide to becoming a detective, his “Maigret del Caribe,” Brulé’s narrow escape from East Germany, and a few other scenes featuring the hapless newbie detective. But of greater interest to me was the political backdrop against which this book is set, during the last gasps of the Allende government prior to the US-backed coup that placed Pinochet in power. And aside from the sillier moments where Brulé is initiated into the detective trade, there is a much more serious exploration of different idealistic visions that got lost somewhere along the way.Very much recommended, especially if you are interested in Latin American history or revolutionary history in general. I hope this book does well; perhaps it will create some interest in translating Ampuero's other novels into English.
    • 4/5
      Cayetano Brule, an unemployed Cuban, is summoned by the famous and revered poet Pablo Neruda for a personal task. Neruda is suffering from cancer and charges Brule to find a man named Dr. Bracamonte, another Cuban who he met in Mexico some years ago who was then engaged in a study of natural remedies for Neruda's condition. When Cayetano protests that he has no experience in detective work, Neruda gives him a few books by Simenon and advises him to study the methods employed by Inspector Maigret.

      The five multi-chapter sections of the book bear the titles of the names of five of the most important women in Neruda’s life, and the reasons for those titles become clear as his past is revealed. In each of the sections, one chapter is given over to Neruda's first-person reminiscences about the woman, his emotional debts and his selfish failures.

      The Neruda Case puts together a mix of suspense, revolutionary turmoil, South American history, and the fictional treatment of a Nobel Prize winning poet into quite an interesting novel. It's Roberto Ampuero’s first novel to appear in English and I hope it won't be the last.
    • 5/5
      An intriguing book that leaves you angry at Neruda's womanizing and more understanding of the Chile under President Allende and then Pinochet. The travels to Mexico, Cuba, Germany and Bolivia makes one feel like a world traveler while happily staying safe, reading at home on the couch.
    • 5/5
      A lovely read. Great translation. This book deserves to be better known.
    • 4/5
      After reading this fine book, I was bemused that I enjoyed it so much, especially since the latest mystery/detective trend appears to make a character that is curious by nature, but not a detective by trade, and introduce a dynamic historical character, and let mystery unfold. It sounds like a sure fire way to make a winning story, but of late it has often failed, due to the author either using clichés about the famous character or failing to build the character and surrounding environment up. This book was a great read, it took me longer than most books of this genre to read, maybe due to the translation (which I assume was true to original and did not trip up my experience), but appeared more lyrical & nuanced cadence than most mysteries. I look forward to the wonderful experience of the global information grid, where more and more authors from other countries are being brought to us in the US, and that is great.
    • 3/5
      A fairly straightforward detective story that Ampuero molds around a fascinating portrait of Neruda—which is by the far the best reason to read this book. Ampuero's detective, Cayetano Brule, ventures from Chile to Mexico, to Cuba, East Germany and to Bolivia in search of clues to individuals involved in the poet's past, which banally involves mostly just talking from one person to the next. The ending, which takes place during Pinochet coup in 1973, is quite well drawn, however.
    • 3/5
      In the first book from this series to be translated into English, private detective Cayetano Brulé, a Cuban who lives in Chile, recalls how he came to become a detective at the instigation of the poet Pablo Neruda. It sounds like an entertaining premise--the Nobel laureate insists that the way to learn to be a detective is to read Simenon's Maigret novels--but the investigation the novice undertakes for the poet is really quite dull. I liked the descriptions, and I learned a lot about Chile, but it took me a very long time to get through this book.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book not only the mystery. I chose the book because I had visited Valparaiso Chile recently and toured Neruda’s home, La Sebastiana. I knew a little of the turbulent history of the 1970’s in Chile, this book helped fill in the pieces of how Neruda and his socialist beliefs fit in the picture. As the reader is transported to Havana, Berlin, Mexico City, and La Paz with the detective trying to find a lost love of Neruda’s, one discovers the connections between the socialists and communists from different countries.
    • 4/5
      The problem for Latin American language authors is that people have a tendency to compare to some pretty heavy hitters, like Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, or Luis Borges. That is patently unfair of course, but people will carry with them these expectations into the book. So the beginning of The Neruda Case was somewhat unpromising. Not very dramatic, somewhat pedestrian and actually kind of slow. In the middle of the beginning paragraph, I started to wonder whether it was the translation that was problem or whether it was Ampuero that was the problem. As I got further into the book, the narrative was good enough to hold my interest without making the reading seem like a chore, the writing got better and the story became far more interesting. Of particular interest were the narratives which was written in Neruda's own voice. Ampuero pulled off the feat of writing in two distinct styles. Although the majority of the narrative was written in the third person subjective voice, and was less than engaging. The novel weaves itself around the life of Pablo Neruda towards the end of his life. The entire narrative hangs itself on Neruda's female conquests, but the end of Neruda's life is also wrapped around the 1973 coup in Chile which saw the legitimately elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende be deposed by Agosto Pinochet and the Nixon White House. That part of the narrative seemed to be more interesting, and Ampuero was seemingly eager to explore that line of narrative. And he did for a time, but he kept returning to the Neruda story because that was the mechanism by which he chose to tell his story.The story got better, the writing got better, and my interest got more piqued as I worked my way through the story. I doubt I would have kept going through the rough parts if it weren't for those narratives written in Neruda's voice. In the end, it was a decently satisfactory story with a fairly satisfactory ending. My interest is piqued enough to try some of Ampuero's other novels.If this seems like a mild review, that is because it is. I am glad I read it, but there was nothing exceptional about the story or the writing.
    • 3/5
      An esteemed writer, a politician, who has long been away from Chile-- No, not Pablo Neruda but Roberto Ampuero writing in his first book translated into English. Ampuero the Chilean Ambassador to Mexico lives in Iowa City seems to be in awe of his subject, a brilliant poet, a literary communist and a womanizer of the first order. The story, told in a book long reminiscence, is a tale of a poor Cuban immigrant, cuckolded by his politically active wife, who is drawn into a hunt for a long lost love of the poet, as Neruda is called endlessly. The hapless detective gets a lessons in detecting from the novels of Simenon, in history and women from people he meets along the way, but never appears to be more than helpless. Why Neruda would have chosen him to find a possible daughter from a long ago liaison is explained in an odd throw away toward the end of the story. Neruda was a fascinating man. The times in which he lived are epochal. The book couldn't live up to that comparison, so its failure to do so is not a surprise, but remains a disappointment.
    • 3/5
      Cayetano is hired by Pablo Neruda to find someone from his past who can answer questions important to Neruda. Cayetano's search takes him to Mexico, Cuba, East Berlin and Bolivia. Intertwined with the military cp against Allende Cayetano's subject, like Ampuero's metaphors are somewhat strained. Still, an entertaining read.
    • 3/5
      In 1972, or so, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, dying of cancer in Valparaiso while Allende’s government falls apart, hires Cuban exile Cayetano Brulé to find a woman he knew 30 years before, in the hopes that the daughter she bore was his, rather than her husband’s. Because Cayetano, as he’s called throughout, has no detective skills, Neruda gives him, and insists he read, some Inspector Maigret crime novels by the Belgian author George Simenon, for training.Cayetano travels to Havana, Mexico City, East Berlin, La Paz, and Santiago detecting, before ending up, again, in Valparaiso, unfortunately at the exact time, September 11, 1973, of Pinochet’s coup. Things don’t go well.This story is framed within present-day events, apparently to set up the possibility of a literary future for the now-experienced investigator.This isn’t a detective story in any way Western readers understand the genre. Instead, it is a mixture of Chilean history, a fictional reflection of Neruda’s relationships with women, some bits about the protagonists relationships with women, with none of it holding together real well, except for the fictional history. I found the character of Cayetano perplexing, getting detective-ish results by people doing things for him and providing him information for no good reason.It’s not awful – I did read it all the way through – but I sure can’t see what’s “delightful” about Cayetano Brulé (as one jacket blurb said) nor can I see why Ampuera is such a hit in Latin America. But he is, and if another book in the series is translated, I’ll give it a shot. This one could be just back-story.
    • 4/5
      In a small café in Valparaíso Chile, Cayetano Brulé sips his coffee and thinks back more than three decades to his first case as private investigator. It was June 1973 and he was hired under the most unlikely of circumstances by the celebrated poet and native son Pablo Neruda for the ostensible purpose of finding Bracamonte, a doctor Neruda knew many years before and who might now be able to save his life. With no more training than he gets from the detective novels of Georges Simenon, Brulé sets off on a journey that takes him to Mexico, Cuba, East Germany and Bolivia, where he learns that the real reason for his mission actually involves the doctor’s wife Beatriz. Returning to Chile a few months later, Cayetano reluctantly becomes entangled in the military to coup that removed Salvador Allende from power while he desperately tries to complete his assignment by delivering some vital information to the poet before he dies.This novel has much to recommend, but I must admit that I was caught off-guard as to what I liked the best—and the least—about it. Unfortunately, as a mystery, “The Neruda Case’ is largely a failure. The search for Bracamonte/Beatriz is surprisingly unengaging and the “secret” that drives so much of the action in the story is just not that interesting. Part of the problem is that respect is that I was never able believe Brulé, a Cuban emigrant who has just been abandoned in the port city by his wife, could actually do the things he is asked to do during the investigation. Further, despite a fleeting reference near the end of the book to having hired other detectives, it is not clear why Neruda would trust such an important mission—which, given the state of the poet’s health, is very likely his last attempt—to an unemployed foreigner with absolutely no experience in the profession.However, those narrative shortcomings were more than redeemed for me by the remarkable sense of time and place that the author is able to create, as well as the loving, yet unsentimental, portrait he paints of Pablo Neruda. People in both the United States and Chile share an interesting connection with the date September 11, but I suspect that most North Americans know far more about the events of 9/11/01 than they do about 9/11/73. As a frequent traveler to the country, I have learned how deeply the Pinochet regime has affected several generations of Chileans and Ampuero, himself an ex-pat from Valparaíso, does an amazing job of transporting the reader to moment when it all began. Equally impressive is the way the author blends fact and fiction in telling the Neruda’s personal history; although an undeniably talented artist, the poet was also a selfish, inveterate womanizer and not always a likeable man, which the story makes abundantly clear.So, on balance, I liked ‘The Neruda Case’ but it is not without its flaws. Readers expecting a gripping, international mystery story—which may well be how the book is marketed—will very likely be quite disappointed. However, those wanting to read a fictionalized account of a fascinating man who lived at an extraordinary time in our shared history will be amply rewarded.
    • 4/5
      I found The Neruda Case interesting but not fascinating. We have Cayetano Brule, Cuban immigrant to Chile in the early 1970s, hoping to find work. His wife is an ardent (but shallow? not sure) political thinker and actor, but Cayetano seems to lack ambition or strong convictions. At a party he is approached by the great Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, and asked to undertake an investigation on the poet's behalf. Cayetano protests that he has no experience in private investigation, and Neruda gives him some of Georges Simenon's Maigret mysteries to read.Cayetano's initial assignment is to find a Mexican doctor whom Neruda had known many years earlier, but this turns out to be a ruse; Neruda wants to find the doctor's wife, his former lover. The case takes Brule to Cuba, Germany, and Bolivia before he finds what he is looking for back in Chile. As he pursues his frantic trips, we learn about the poet's women and his pattern of leaving one for another. Ampuero does some mildly interesting things with the differences between Maigret's adventures and Brule's; this sort of thing seems to be pretty much de rigeur these days in a South American novel aspiring to literary status. More interesting is the way Brule's adventures follow Neruda's love life, in that his assignments and travels change as the poet's relationships did. Neruda does not come off well in this tale, and I wonder whether an agenda is involved. Overall the story unfolds slowly and occasionally painfully so. The setting of the novel into history, coming as the aging poet approaches death and Chile approaches the Pinochet era, lends it some specific resonances that would otherwise be missing.
    • 4/5
      Ampuero's novel, explaining his recurring character Cayetano Brule's first case as an investigator (this is one of a series of Brule novels, but apparently not only the first in English, but the one to explain the "beginnings"), is nicely drawn, but not the hard hitting mystery/thriller many English readers might expect. While set in revolutionary Chile in the waning days of Allende, it is best read as a political primer with a side story. The politics of Chile, Cuba, the Eastern Bloc, of the time are all crucial to Brule's assignment, given to him by the dying Neruda: find one of his lost loves and ask her a question. There is excitement, but the milder political thriller type of hiding in shadows and looking for clues. I have recently read some thrillers by Latin writers which are very chilling or brutal, and this novel is tame in comparison. Brule starts by mulling over how he got started in this investigation business, and the novel is bookended with the meeting he was on his way to complete. There is a nice twist at that point, and I enjoyed the book as a whole.
    • 4/5
      In his first case as a pivate investigator, Cayetano Brulé is hired by the reknowned Chilean poet Pablo Neruda to uncover secrets from the poet's past.The investigation sends him to many different countries as he chases his elusive subject.This was an interesting book, with glimpses into the chaotic Chile of the early 1970's and behind the iron curtain of the same era. What I especially liked, though, were the descriptions of Valparaíso and of Neruxa's home there. I was so intrigued by the description of Neruda's house that I looked it up on Google images.
    • 3/5
      A whimsical mystery in a vein similiar to A Samba for Sherlock by Jo Soares. The central character, Cayento Brule, is a Cuban Forest Gump who bumps into a variety of Chilean political figures in the early 70s. There is no true "mystery" in the traditional sense, rather an investigation into the life and motives of Nobel-prize-winning poet, Pablo Neruda. The book is truly an ode to Pablo Neruda who resided, on a part-time basis, in the same city as the author. Personally, I found the Afterword more interesting than the book itself. I give the book a mild nod. Difficult to believe that this book is the initial book in a series. For mystery enthusiasts looking for a new international series to become hooked on, I'd recommend looking elsewhere.
    • 3/5
      I just finished Amouero's The Neruda Case and have spent a few minutes mulling over what I wanted to say in this review. The book was good, not spectacular, but good. This is a slow moving, very descriptiive story that not only focuses on the mystery of the title but also the political situations of Chile and Cuba that are the backdrop of the story. This is the first book introducing Ampuero's detective, Cayetano and it proved to be a good introduction. I enjoyed reading about Neruda's life, his loves and political position more than the actually mystery. It was almost as if the mystery was just there as a vessel to deliver a tribute to Neruda and as that it was well done. It leaves me curious to see what the follow up books in the series will be like. Will thhey fall flat without someone the author obviously admires greatly as a central figure? I will look into the follow ups as they become published in English but cannot say I will or will not stick with the series. Based
    • 5/5
      I read it. I went back and read parts of it again. And then I flipped pages at random and read paragraphs in no particular order. This book is dense with a sense of place and events in a part of the world and a time largely strange to me: Chile in 1973. I asked for this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers because I am a fan of Neruda’s poetry, and I expected to find a typical who-done-it detective story with little bits of information about Neruda scattered here and there. To my tremendous pleasure, it turned out to be about Neruda at the end of his life as seen though the eyes of Cayetano Brulé, a man out of place both geographically and spiritually, whose life is changed when Neruda lures him into service as a detective. Suspenseful. Colorful. Why, oh, why didn’t I study Spanish in high school so I would not have to wait for books like this to be translated into English!