Book #7: The Winners by Julio Cortazar

Yeah, I know, I owe you book posts.

This book was a recommendation from my sister, Jessa, and as you know, she rarely falls down on the job.

The Winners is strangely hypnotic, entirely engrossing, which is perhaps unfortunate given its fairly disturbing atmosphere. A group of people win a national lottery for a cruise vacation. They assemble without knowing anything about the trip, where they are going, what sort of ship they will be on, who else will be going. So of course there is an air of edginess from the beginning. Too much is uncertain and unknown. And things don't get much better once they are on the ship, in fact, it's strangely worse. As an extra complication in the normal negotiations between people who were previously strangers, but will shortly be living in close quarters for quite some time, where they are going remains up for speculation. And then there is the other side of the ship, the side they are forbidden to enter.

That's all I can say for the plot before giving anything substantial away. But I can say that Cortazar has drawn together a richly diverse group of people, and it is their complex inner lives that drive the plot. They are intensely compelling, and you will find yourself unable to look away.

This book is not recommended for those who prefer their reading light. But for those who enjoy enmeshing themselves in a complexity they cannot immediately understand, and those who are willing to be disturbed by a book and its implications for days on end.