Octavio's Journey by Miguel Bonnefoy

This is one of those can't win situations.  Looking at all the accolades this book got seems to indicate that I should love it.   I didn't!   It was a coming of age story of an illiterate city dweller in Venezuela who learned to read, traveled often in bad company and grew older with some sort of transition into immortality.

The prose is often beautiful in the book with vivid and emotional descriptions of people and places.  Although the book has won a lot of awards, I just found it a touch confusing.  Octavio was not heroic but I think he was meant to be a role model peasant, the down trodden, broad shouldered, stoic soul who persists and survives regardless of life's perils. 

It was interesting. 

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.