Latest Review: "The Faint-hearted Bolshevik" by Lorenzo Silva

Because we love books and love to talk about them SO MUCH (and because we fell behind a bit over the holidays AND because we’re all snowed in today after last nights semi-blizzard), here’s another review for all y’all before the weekend hits. This latest addition to our “Reviews”: section in a piece by Peter Biello on Lorenzo Silva’s The Faint-hearted Bolshevik, out from Hispabooks Publishing.

Peter Biello is the organizer of the Burlington Writers Workshop and a producer/announcer/host at Vermont Public Radio. He’s also followable on Twitter @PeterBiello.

Three cheers to Peter for not only joining the ranks as a reviewer for Three Percent, but for taking on a book that not only has the narrator explaining how his soul is a dead weight nestled between his nads, but also shows the extremes of post-road-rage.

Here’s the beginning of Peter’s review:

Let’s say you’re in a car accident. It’s not a bad one. You rear-end someone on a busy highway where traffic is crawling. And let’s say the person you hit happens to be a wealthy woman who leaps from her vehicle and berates you in language unfit for the ears of small children. What would you do?

Javier, the supposed name of the protagonist of Lorenzo Silva’s novel The Faint-hearted Bolshevik, finds himself in this exact scenario and consequently decides to spend his summer playing pranks on the woman, Sonsoles—though the word “prank” hardly describes what he does. For amusement, Javier calls the woman’s home, lying in a variety of ways, all of which inflict psychological stress on Sonsoles and her family.

What kind of sick individual does such a thing? Javier is no prince, but he suffers in ways we can all, to some extent, relate to, which makes the story palatable. His job pays well, but traps him in a rat race that leaves him feeling like his soul is “a dead weight down there, just below my nut sack.” He lives alone, is average-looking, and his mother died years ago. There’s no mention of his having family or friends. In our first encounter with Javier, Sonsoles treats him like trash. By the end of chapter one, Javier has decided to make Sonsoles suffer, and all this reviewer could feel is schadenfreude.

For the rest of the piece, go here.