COLOMBIAN author Juan Vasquez's "The Sound of Things Falling" Resonates

The seductive & eloquent novel by Vasquez (b. Columbia 1973) is set in Bogota during the bloody drug cartel years of the 1980's.  Drug lord Pablo Escobar reigned terror on the streets of Bogota.  People lived in daily fear of  indiscriminate shootings.  Escobar became incredibly wealthy & notorious from drug smuggling & murder.  Each generation has its defining historic events.  Vasquez somnolent prose lends a dreamlike quality to the cataclysmic, life altering events during the Medellin cartel.  The novel is devotes itself to the damaging exercise of remembering.  Antonio, a young Univ. professor befriends the elderly Ricardo & their lives intertwine briefly.  Ricardo is released after serving a long jail term for flying cocaine into the U.S.  Ricardo is killed in a drive by shooting alongside Antonio who is left physically & emotionally scarred.  Ricardo was eagerly awaintg the arrival of his estranged American wife after their lengthy separation, hopeful of a reconciliation.  Antonio obtains the cassette belonged to Ricardo containing the recording of the black box from the doomed flight with Ricardo's wife on board. The book's title refers to "the sounds of live being extinguished, the sound of things falling from on high."  Recorded messages from those trapped in the Twin Towers to their loved ones are tragic & deeply personally deserving of our acknowledgement & respect.  Vasquez quotes an  Aurelio Artoro poem written in 1929, "Unblinking, I watched it collapse and fall like a rose petal under a hoof.  Walls fell over the beloved voices... toppling like a city collapsing in screams."  This unflinching & poignant novel cautions: "There is no more destructive mania than the speculation over roads not taken." Take time to read Vasquez's award winning novel "The Sound of Things Falling."  It resonates deeply with sorrow, wisdom & beauty.