There are narratives piled upon narratives, grand illusions that draw a reader in so completely that even suffering becomes part of the dream. You may feel irrational, yet with clear interpretation you reveal the deepest layers of yourself.
Obscene Nite Owl (1970, 2022, Penguin Random House), a title borrowed from Henry James by Chilean writer José Donoso, opens with the death of an elderly woman in what seems to be a convent or a grim women’s asylum, inhabited by orphans and unseen lives. From the start, the book follows a flowing, unbroken current that emphasizes two constants: the characters’ isolation and the degradation they endure.
The author spent eight years crafting the work, consumed by planning and development. Donoso builds two realities that defy ordinary logic, existing apart from daily life and without anchored times or places. They feel disconnected yet are linked by a conceptual framework that shapes a complex understanding of reality. On one side lies La Chimba, with its endless terraces and rooms packed with countless parcels, presented in a chorus of decrepit, miserable women who could be nuns, orphans, unstable figures. They populate the plot and fill the scene around Dopey and Iris in a room intended to imprison a child. On the other side is Rinconada farm, a shelter for a wild array of human remains and creatures of nature, a surreal locale from another world where Boy, Aizcoitía’s deformed son, lives among a cast that rarely centers him. Two places guard two different destinies for two children.
The novel hinges on two male protagonists whose paths run in opposition. One is a narrator who evolves from Humberto Peñalosa into Mudito; the other is Don Jerónimo de Azcoitía, who governs the lives of those around him. Their encounters mark the shifting narrative, starting with Humberto, the latent author and secretary to Don Jerónimo. The two men move in opposite directions: Don Jerónimo embodies masculine authority, steadfastness, and rigidity, while the other slowly abandons traditional masculinity, traverses gender boundaries, and moves toward a kinship with the elder women of the house. Donoso makes plain that the women are largely oppressed, lacking independence or victory within the space they inhabit.
The book is a study in bifurcation and fluidity. Dialogues are crisp and colloquial, while long, densely packed sentences—exceeding 130 words—stack actions and explanations in a continuous flow. This latter style pulls the reader into an obsessive state inside the oppressive, repetitive world where characters blur, and logic dissolves. A point of view emerges where attempts to impose logic prove futile.
Everything conveyed and every manner of telling are wrapped in a mood of terror. Ghosts and hauntings mingle with visions of sanctity and insinuations, and spaces bend while times shift from present to past and back, often without warning. The narrative feels like an imaginary novel born from a mind that treats plot developments as a puzzle with no resolution. It remains a work that still lingers in the reader’s mind long after the last page is turned.
So why engage with this novel? Beyond any political commentary, a seasoned reader can become utterly absorbed, surprised, and repelled by a work that resists ease, resists simple interpretation, and feels almost experimental in nature. Art is felt and savored, even when answers are scarce or absent, inviting readers to wrestle with ambiguity rather than seek a single, conclusive solution.