The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Creature of a Day, by Juan Tovar, translated by Leland H. Chambers
reviewed by Sarah McClellan

Untitled document

Juan Tovar. Creature of a Day. Trans. Leland H. Chambers. McPherson, 2002. 160 pp. $20.00.

Creature of a Day is Mexican novelist Juan Tovar’s first book to be translated into English. This edition also contains material that is not yet available in the original Spanish. Tovar’s previous work consists of four novels, six collections of stories, and two dozen plays. It is not surprising, then, that this work combines elements of all the above. The result, a novel in the loosest sense, reexamines the genre and approaches it as a fluid interaction of several short-story strands. On the one hand, the novel has a modern frame-tale narrative that is peopled with characters borrowed loosely from Grimm. On the other, it is a pastoral drama scripted with a lyrical quality that owes much to Chaucer and the medieval poets. It subscribes to multiple theologies in its exploration of the rites of pagan and Christian ideologies. It is equally concerned with both universal mythologies and those found within the constructs of the world Tovar creates. The internal world of the novel is dominated by the labyrinthine strands of the multiple themes. In this way it has been compared to Borges but lacks his sense of structure, purpose, and intellectual energy. This, combined with the heavy rhetoric Tovar employs, allows the narrative to become sluggish in places. The novel’s exploration of consciousness and belief in relation to the legends Tovar creates and manipulates contrasts with his explicit reminders that we are being told a tale. This metafictional quality has the alienating effect of a character aside to an audience, thus cleverly reinforcing the notion that what we are dealing with here is not, in fact, prose after all. Whether ballad or drama, Tovar successfully re-creates a pilgrimage in words. His band of pilgrims highlight the freedoms that lie in migration but also, conversely, the need for a foundation in belief.


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Creature of a Day, by Juan Tovar, translated by Leland H. Chambers reviewed by Sarah McClellan Untitled document Juan Tovar. Creature of a Day. Trans. Leland H. Chambers. McPherson, 2002. 160 pp. $20.00. Creature of a Day is Mexican novelist Juan Tovar’s first book to be translated into English. This edition also contains material that is not yet available in the original Spanish. Tovar’s previous work consists of four novels, six collections of stories, and two dozen plays. It is not surprising, then, that this work combines elements of all the above. The result, a novel in the loosest sense, reexamines the genre and approaches it as a fluid interaction of several short-story strands. On the one hand, the novel has a modern frame-tale narrative that is peopled with characters borrowed loosely from Grimm. On the other, it is a pastoral drama scripted with a lyrical quality that owes much to Chaucer and the medieval poets. It subscribes to multiple theologies in its exploration of the rites of pagan and Christian ideologies. It is equally concerned with both universal mythologies and those found within the constructs of the world Tovar creates. The internal world of the novel is dominated by the labyrinthine strands of the multiple themes. In this way it has been compared to Borges but lacks his sense of structure, purpose, and intellectual energy. This, combined with the heavy rhetoric Tovar employs, allows the narrative to become sluggish in places. The novel’s exploration of consciousness and belief in relation to the legends Tovar creates and manipulates contrasts with his explicit reminders that we are being told a tale. This metafictional quality has the alienating effect of a character aside to an audience, thus cleverly reinforcing the notion that what we are dealing with here is not, in fact, prose after all. Whether ballad or drama, Tovar successfully re-creates a pilgrimage in words. His band of pilgrims highlight the freedoms that lie in migration but also, conversely, the need for a foundation in belief.

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