Money to Burn, Piglia

Hello everyone! Week 10's book is Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia, a thriller type book following a group in Argentina who commit an armed robbery, and then flee to Uruguay, where they were eventually discovered in an armed shootout. 

I am not sure what to write about other than how disturbed I felt reading this. It was very heavy and there were lots of things to think about and digest. Apart from the obvious heist, steeling things and killing people, there was complete sexualization of a 15 year old girl, numerous use of slurs, graphic descriptions of a child's murder, and I think it was all just too much for me. The way the book nonchalantly explained horrific acts was unsettling. Even writing this I'm having trouble paraphrasing but for example on page 52 describing the way a man was drowned in a lake after he had sex with and chained a foreigner to a post. Another example, is when the 15 year old girl was being described and completely sexualized throughout the book. 

Speaking of this girl, I made a connection to last weeks book, The Lover by Marguerite Duras, as the narrator and the Girl are both underage with relationships with older men. After reading the Lover and seeing a relationship that is not described in an exploitative way, I tried to look at the relationship between the Girl and Crow differently. While the stories are completely different, there is some obvious similarities to The Lover as the Girl in Money to Burn is described as fancying Crow and benefitting from their relationship by bringing money home to her family (page 14, 15). However, reading how the guys from the gang looked at her like starving dogs (page 15), and how Dorda described her body (page 55) ultimately I think is just wrong. A further connection I noticed with The Lover is that it is based on real events like Money to Burn. However, both of this books are ultimately retellings of stories with mixtures of fictional and real events. 

Knowing that there are elements based on a true story in this book made it more impacting to me because it opens your eyes to what genuinely happens in real life. I found it a struggle to get through some of the scenes in this book and I could not get past these scenes to explore the underlying themes of the book. Potentially this is because when reading, you become more immersed in the characters minds. For example, on page 40 when Malito was reading the news article, he felt no remorse for the little girl who had been killed in the heist, and was mostly concerned with the fact that his identity was not known. Part of him wanted the credit for this murder.  

My question for this week is: Were you able to enjoy the book even through its disturbing nature? 

Comments

  1. Ava Hamid-Nejad20 March 2024 at 21:03

    Hi Samantha! Thank you for you blog post. I completely agree with you regarding the violent themes of the book, they were pretty off putting and I definitely found myself grimacing at some parts. I do think I was still able to enjoy the book because as you mention a lot of the books we have read deal with themes regarding violence towards women so I have almost come to expect it at this point.

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  2. Lauren Waring21 March 2024 at 13:32

    I totally agree with you in the sense that when a novel is based off of a true story it almost changes your role as a reader to a bystander rather than someone escaping. I think part of the gore also does that too. As a bystander we are forced to witness these gruesome acts and take on the cruelty of their actions.

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