In the Casa Azul: A Novel of Revolution and Betrayal

I enjoyed this novel because it pulled charactors and history from two previously and recently read biographies: The Orientalist and Them. The novel provided the fictional twist or color commentary to the historical events of the other two books. Good read.

While the pervious reviewers summed up quite well the novel's basic plotline (Leon Trotsky's mexican exile) and structure (multiple narratives), what seems to have been left behind is the emotional response this novel succeeds in evoking in its reader. I am by profession an academic historian, but when I come to read a historical novel I do not come in search for the facts and figures. Rather, I am hoping that the novelist may offer me an alternative (yes, fictional) path to revisioning the past and provoke me to rethink long held truths. Meaghan Delahunt has juxtaposed texts, voices, artwork, flashbacks and flash-forwards to recreate an era that for most of us is even more foreign than a foreign country: the first half of the 20th century, an era of true-believers, when people chose to live and die for their beliefs. By piecing together the varied texts, Delahunt utilizes a common post-modern literary device designed to evoke nonlinear insights. So this is not your traditional historical novel, with a linear plot progression and well-rounded characters; if you are looking for such a novel at this moment, you may well be disappointed. But if you are willing to go along with the author and face the challege of its narrave structure, you will find you have been rewarded with a unique and mesmerizing historical novel, which succeeds in conveying the texture and timbre of another place and time far better than many "facutal" historical texts