THE TROUBLESOME OFFSPRING OF CARDINAL GUZMAN

Once again, de Berniäres turns magic realism into a literary Latin American theme park where the familiar attractions— levitating villagers, centuries-old wanderers, protean plants and animals—appear with nothing new or original added. Mythic hero Dionisio Vivo—fighter of druglords in Se§or Viva and the Coca Lord—is now living in the remote Andean village of Cochadebajo. Vivo, the father of 30 children, though he still mourns his beloved, long-dead Anica, is a national columnist—the country's conscience—as well as one of the defenders of the village against the assault by bloodthirsty religious fanatics bent on rooting out heresy. Plot, though, is secondary—it's here only to provide successive set-pieces in which various characters can display their larger-than-life vices, virtues, and talents: ailing Cardinal Guzman is haunted by the demons of his corruptions, torments that are cured only by surgery—his tumor turns out to be an unborn twin—and his decision to leave the church and do good with his longtime mistress and their dead son, Christobal, reborn as a humming bird. Also included: a Mexican musicologist married to twins Lena and Ena; the ghost of Thomas Aquinas, who, appalled by the fanatical priests' sincerity, wishes he'd never written; Professor Luis, whose inventions save the village from destruction; conquistadors in rusting armor; a false priest who levitates and quotes salacious classics; jungle cats that eat strawberries and chocolates; a corrupt, sexually obsessed national-president; an ancient, starving, Quixote-like knight in search of ``the beast'' he must kill. And the grand climax, the battle that defeats the crusading fanatics, is undercut by a frenetic display of ambitious but old-hat literary virtuosity. Faux fiction that fails because—not in spite of—the writer's best efforts.