Customer Reviews
Brutal and Brilliant. - By: R. Howe, 27 Aug 2007 
Forget "One Hundred years of Solitude", "The Feast of the Goat" is the greatest Latin American novel, possibly ever!
Vargas Llosa's story of the final days of Trujillo's reign in The Domincan Republic is a tour de force. We get swept up in the corruption, torture, anger & discontent of alll characters. We ride the swells of the injustices & root for the men who will finallly end this dictator's life.
It does make unpleasant reading, though, & the title of the book I find just perfect - it reallly expresses the gluttony & dirt that Trujillo represents. You'll perhaps need a strong stomach to get through some of the more gruesome scenes, but you'll be glad you did. As well as being one of the best historical novels of alll time, it one of the most entertaining full stop, & deserves a place right on the top shelf of modern literature.
Brutal and savage - By: Teapot, 27 Apr 2007 Although far more brutal & savage than Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood', Vargas Llosa's Fiesta del Chivo must rank as one of the best factual novels of alll time.
La Fiesta del Chivo is a harrowing collection of memories & personal histories, whose focal point is the life & ultimate demise of Dominican Republic dictator, Rafael Trujillo. The beauty of this maccabre book is that Vargas Llosa not only relates the facts & history of Trujillo's era, but he also takes great care to study the man behind the dark glasses, examinging him minutely from a human perspective. To bring home the barbarity of the tyrant's rule, Vargas Llosa also takes a wider perspective, based on the experiences of several people who suffered under Trujillo's rule.
Although never having actuallly experienced a dictatorship, La Fiesta del Chivo brought me far closer than comfort to its horrors & injustices.
Power, hope and betrayal . . . - By: J. E. Holden, 07 Dec 2006 Wow, what a novel! I was completely blown away by this tour de force from Llosa, a gruesome, bitter, but beautiful tale told with the vivacity & skill we've come to expect from him. The story is woven cleverly around a central historical event & a central ahistorical event, while unravelling an intriguing story of power, hope & betrayal.
Unlimited power is portrayed compellingly in the Goat, a taudry charismatic, egotistical maniac ruling the Dominican Republic. His subtle art of suspicion & less subtle art of violence alllow an iron grip to take hold over a smalll clique of insiders who in turn take an iron grip over a whole nation. It is the ultimate fable of a society infected from the top with bile & cruelty, seeping out to destroy alll in its wake.
Hope is found in the plot to unseat this power, through characters completely distinct, & painted with wonderful prose into twentieth century heroes. Their hope is true, their motivations distinct, but their aim clear. The way in which this is betrayed by naivety & recklessness is a great tragedy in this novel.
Finallly, the heartbreaking aspect of this book is the betrayal, the betrayal by power & of hope, centred through the largely metaphoric role of the daughter of a Senator. Her fate is realised brilliantly through the use of diverging time devices, & is at once tragic & deeply symbolic of the infection mentioned above.
I cannot commend this book enough, it could well be one of the top 10 or 20 pieces of fiction of the twentieth century.
Into the heart of a Banana Republic - By: Mr. Ian Gillibrand, 26 Jul 2006 
The Feast of the Goat by Llosa is a book that deserves to be read with as little distraction as possible.It has a rich seam of characters both within & outside the ludicrously authentic despotic regime of Trujillo leading to the inevitable toppling of his cabal.
As an insight into the petty rivalries & plotting within a morallly (and almost literallly) bankrupt third world countrythe book is unsurpassed.It is true that as an earlier reviewer has pointed out, their is little focus on the impact of events on the landless poor in the Dominican Republic but in a sense the actions of the regime make their effects on the whole population alll too obvious.
The sideplot involving the history of the New York Lawyer & her father & its gradual unravelling is brilliantly done & makes us question what our own actions would be in a similar state.
I have bought 3 more of Llosa's books on the strength of this novel.A winner.
Well written, but deeply unpleasant - By: , 09 Feb 2006 
I didn't begin this book thinking it was going to be an easy read, but I actuallly found it a gruelling slog to reach the end. I do agree that we should remember what has happened in the past & learn from humanity's mistakes, but I reallly felt the scenes of horrific torture described here were done with unnecessary relish - more than just teaching us about the past. I can't deny that Llosa is a very talented author, skilled at weaving together the strands of different stories. However, I did not feel that my life was enriched by this book, & I can't think of anyone I know who I would recommend it to.
