I didn't have much to say about it when I wrote about it at the time, apart from that I loved it. I'm glad I went back to it. I saw more in it this time. It also provided an interesting contrast to The She-Devil in the Mirror: I saw parallels to it when rereading The Dream of My Return that I hadn't seen before. There's a similar unearthing of a complex truth through a series of what seem to be offhand remarks or remembrances. The book covers four weeks or so, during which the narrator starts seeing a doctor, who also practices homeopathy, acupuncture, and hypnotherapy. What the reader learns about the narrator – and what he learns about himself – takes almost the form of analysis. (In fact, he attributes his own state of mind to the hypnotherapy he's undergoing.) What at first reads as the (hilarious) addled rants and reckless behavior of an alcoholic takes on more depth as we learn of the trauma after trauma the narrator experienced in his youth in El Salvador in the period leading up to and during the civil war. These memories reemerge as he's on the verge of returning to El Salvador to start a new life, and is asking himself whether he's paving the way for his own death.
