Eloquently translated ... Cabrera’s life, one quickly realizes, covers a wide and rich canvas ... Vásquez recorded more than thirty hours of conversation with Cabrera over the course of seven years, and has distilled the filmmaker’s memories into a meaningful narrative ... Any novel balances summary and scene, telling and showing, but this is a novel largely of telling, because there is much to impart.
Given the richness of the source material it’s disappointing that large parts of Cabrera’s life story really drag ... Although Vásquez does invent some dialogue for his real-life characters, we are never fully inside their consciousnesses: the events of their lives, both large and small, flicker and glow at a historical remove, as though we are watching a magic lantern show ... Retrospective is a dogged and conscientious account of a family whose lives have been bound up in some of Europe’s key historical moments, but it lacks the pliancy and texture of, say, Keggie Carew’s moving and compelling story of her extraordinary father, Dadland, which was rightly billed as memoir. While undoubtedly an achievement in its ordering of history, is Retrospective a novel? Not in my book. A memoir-by-proxy? Yes, perhaps.
Lucid remarks...we see at once how they refer to the novel’s expert management of lived time and remembered time. But the 'figure' or the 'architecture' of the novel must be more than technical too, and perhaps it can’t be described, only experienced and then pointed to. In this sense Vásquez’s epigrammatic opening to his note says more than anything that comes after: “‘Retrospective’ is a work of fiction, but there are no imaginary episodes in it.” We should leave this fine sentence alone, of course, but certain clauses may present themselves as clarifications of what we think we understand.
Demonstrate[s] that Vásquez possesses the authority to be the chronicler of the Colombian story or stories. His writing is clear and concise, though also lyrical; the anecdotes he includes in his novels don’t unfold in chronological order, but rather in a recursive style. He often returns to painful episodes that alter his characters’ lives.
The book bears some of the stiffness of heavy research, at times reading more like a biography than a novel, complete with family photos. But it’s a strong entry in the author's careerlong exploration of the ways the political winds can change an artist’s fortunes. A sharp study of the perils of ideology in collision with art.
A dramatic if bloated epic ... The narrative has its share of exciting moments amid Colombia’s historical turmoil, yet Vásquez’s intense attention to detail and frequent historical asides tend to bog things down. This frustrates as much as it fascinates.
