Nonfiction: The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

In 2018 I picked up Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras and was both captivated and fascinated with the story, which was based on events from the author's life as a child in Colombia. In her memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds, Contreras talks about her fortune-telling mother, her experience with amnesia, and the history and dangers of her home country.

Genre, Themes, History: This book is a memoir that on the surface explores the role that magic has played in the author's life and family. Though the book does not move through time in a linear fashion, Contreras will tell not only her family's history, but also the history of Colombia and the everlasting effects of Spanish colonization. The book more or less begins in the middle, at the pivotal moment when Contreras loses her memories after suffering a head injury in Chicago. A similar thing happened to her mother when she was a small child and fell down an empty well in Colombia. From here, Contreras will detail not only her own journey through Colombia and eventually to the U.S, but she will also talk extensively about her family's many trips throughout Colombia when she was young, as the country was constantly at war with itself, and its citizens were always needing to navigate the danger. And at the center of the story are her mother and grandfather, both of which were known for their gifts involving magic and healing, though these gifts will divide the family as a whole, causing a conflict that remains unresolved. 

My Verdict: Naturally, what initially drew me to this book was how much I enjoyed Fruit of the Drunken Tree, and I was excited to read more about the real life events that Contreras drew from when writing that novel. When Contreras begins the book with the accident that left her with amnesia, it immediately puts the entire story off balance, and I do not know if that was intentional or not, but it is effective. Things are made even more confusing as the story moves around through time, sometimes taking place in 2012 when Contreras and her mother make the trip to Colombia to move her grandfather's remains, and sometimes exploring the family's history when Contreras was a child, or when her mother was a child, or going even further back to when the Spanish arrived in Colombia to claim what was not theirs. With that being said, the stories that are told are fascinating, and Contreras' language is just as arresting in her nonfiction as it is in her fiction. 

Favorite Moment: I often found myself the most interested in the small sections where Contreras talked about the political turmoil that took place in Colombia during the 80s and 90s, and how that made life incredibly difficult for its citizens. 

Recommended Reading: I recommend Fruit of the Drunken Tree to any historical fiction lover looking for a story that takes place outside of the U.S, and also not during World War II.