About the Book

Award-winning, internationally acclaimed writer Guillermo Arriaga weaves a luminous, insightful story of love and friendship, passion and betrayal, lunacy and mental illness. Set in Mexico City, The Night Buffalo revolves around the mysterious suicide of Gregorio, a charismatic but troubled young man who was betrayed by the two people he trusted most.

Review

Guillermo Arriaga's novel The Night Buffalo is a lot to deal with. Not only is it an intense character study, but it is also a tense, dramatic struggle for coping with suicide and also a very in depth look at suicide itself. This book is recommended for lovers of thrillers and character pieces, otherwise, I'd shy away from it.

Arriaga does a fine job at pacing and keeping the reader interested to a certain extent in the characters, but there's something very lack-luster about this book as a whole. I think it may be the bluntness of the language, which may come through because of a poor translation, but after looking into the book at the start, I was interested and unfortunately it didn't live up to any sort of small expectations that I had.

This book seems to feel like it has a lot of depth, but in reality, that depth doesn't come through very often. It may be an issue because of the choice of a love triangle at the center of the piece, but more often than not, I did not feel very much for anyone.

The most interesting part of this novel was showcasing and understanding the reverberations that are felt after the death of a person and how one life lost can have a monumental effect on other lives closely involved with it. This novel allows for some reflection, but over all, it does little other than take up precious reading time.