Money to Burn – My First Rant

I absolutely did not like Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia at all. It started off very promising with an exciting start, quickly jumping into action. Although, as the book continued, and I learned more about the characters, I just began to loathe it. I am not a ranting type of person but this book makes me want to rant.

Like okay, I understand having characters in a book that are not the best people or just horrible people, but this was not it. The characters had no redeeming qualities at all, I felt zero sympathy for them. I would feel sympathy if they expressed some sort of remorse for their actions throughout the entire book, but nothing, absolutely nothing. One part that sticks out to me at the beginning of the book is the young girl whose face was turned into a “blood cavity” during the heist. It was Malito who was reading this story in the paper and showed no remorse for his involvement in this tragedy, feeling “both satisfied at not having been recognized, and at the same time saddened at not seeing his own photo” (40-41). I am not opposed to characters in novels that are “evil” or “bad”, but I felt like the writing made their existence solely based on their horrible actions. As a result, when the shootout-esc-situation occurred I did not care about their fates. In the lecture it is mentioned that it is not explicit whether or not we should sympathize with the criminals, but the “complexity” added to them makes me believe the author intended to humanize the criminals and their actions.

My other issue with the book was the descriptions of women. I swear every time they talked about a woman they used the word whore in the same sentence, and it got tiring. Almost all the female characters were one-note sexual objects that were used to explain the main characters’ personality, such as Gaucho. I just wish there was more exploration into the characters, especially Blanca, as the author apparently met her, I would think she would be more complex and detailed.

Another issue I have with the novel is how the information was presented. I think the novel being written as a “true story” was the reason the narrative was a little confusing, as sometimes the author would write the characters thoughts as if he knew all, but would later pivot to explaining events as “according to” a paper or journalist.

One positive thing I will give to the book is the Epilogue. The Epilogue was a nice touch to the end of the novel to explain why things were written the way they were and how the author came to write this book. I was grateful for the added perspective but it did not change my opinion on the book. In the novel there were “philosophical” points being discussed, but because I did not connect with the novel in any way, it did not impact me at all.

Discussion Questions 

1. Did you enjoy the novel? Was it what you expected from a crime novel? 
2. What are your opinions on the women in the novel? Do you think they were as complex as the heist members?