Conversation in the Cathedral was a challenging read. Partly because I felt underinformed about Peruvian political history, but largely because it has a very confusing narrative style. For the first hundred (or couple hundred, if I'm honest) pages, I kept wishing it was one of those books that had a cast of characters that explains who's who and how they're all connected. New characters would pop up with no introduction. And aside from the little bits of the book that make up the present-day titular conversation (an actual conversation, between two people, at a bar called la Catedral), it was often hard to know when anything was taking place. (The bulk of the book's narrative spans a decade or so around the 1950s.) The same paragraph might include - in alternating sentences - multiple narratives, among different characters, around events taking place years apart. It takes effort to unpack, but the effort is worth it. The way the stories are woven together in the narrative reflects the complex interwoven relationships among the characters, and feels very true to life.
Conversation in the Cathedral is divided into four large sections and I found the reading easier after I got through the first section. I did something I rarely do while reading this book: I took breaks and read other books in between. Between the first and second sections, I read Richard Price's The Whites. Between the second and third sections, I read Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches, and between the third and fourth sections, I read the remaining two books in Deborah Harkness' All Souls trilogy. Part of me wishes I had read Conversation in the Cathedral straight through. I think I probably missed or lost some things by spacing it out the way I did. However, if I had read it straight through, I think I would have felt it was quite a slog. (I felt that way a bit anyway, and maybe it was exacerbated by the fact that it took me so long to finish... because I kept breaking to read other books?? idk.) Anyway, stopping in the midst of books is not something I do often. I did it earlier this year when I was reading The Obscene Bird of Night and I felt like it was the right decision at the time. The only other time I recall having done this successfully was many, many years ago when I read The Long Day Wanes. In that case, I stopped (at a well chosen, between "books" stopping point) without entirely intending to go back, and found I was really glad I did so. Maybe I should go back and read those last 150 pages of Moby Dick (which I abandoned in 2008)?
