Poor Man's Wealth
Rod Usher
Poor Man’s Wealth
Rod Usher
For fans of Andrew Nicoll’s THE GOOD MAYOR, this is a delightfully wise and witty tale of a hoax perpetuated by a group of narcoleptic villagers – led by their mayor, El Gordo – to rescue their town from ruin, abandon their inhibitions and unite two lonely hearts.
Part fable, part love story, part comi-tragedy, Poor Man’s Wealth is narrated, somewhat unreliably, by El Gordo, the Fat One. He is the mayor of Higot, a dusty village in an unnamed Spanish-speaking country under military rule. He and the secret Marisol Committee, a group of local councillors, dream up a plan to save the village from economic death and the exodus of its young people, especially now that tobacco, their one source of income, is a suspect crop.they start a hoax.El Gordo, whose charming English comes via a library bequeathed to him, argues that the hoax which so changes the life of Higot is no more a deception than, say, the Loch Ness Monster, Ireland’s Blarney Stone, the Colossus of Rhodes … Can they pull it off, attract tourists to unattractive Higot? Will the hunchback Bartolomeo, a sex scandal involving a bicycle, or the military junta, blow the hoax apart and see its perpetrators ‘disappeared’?El Gordo takes the reader on a joyous, witty and wise journey through the travails of his village … and his heart.Product of an Australian mother and an American father, Rod Usher lives in Extremadura, Spain, with his Spanish wife, Angela Gutierrez. He grew up in Melbourne, where, after dropping out of law school, he began a career as a journalist. He has been literary editor of tHE AGE, chief sub-editor of tHE SUNDAY tIMES, London, and senior writer for the European edition of tIME MAGAZINE. His poetry is published in Australian literary magazines, including QUADRANt, ISLAND and MEANJIN. He plays flute, not very well, in the Guzman Ricis municipal band in the village of Barcarrota.A delightfully wise and witty tale of a hoax perpetrated by a group of villagers to rescue their community from ruin - in the process abandoning their inhibitions, and uniting two lonely hearts.
Review
Amy Roil
In a dust-filled heat haze somewhere in Latin America lies Higot, a tobacco town with not even a bus service to its nearest neighbour. It’s difficult to fool gossip-starved locals in a place where ‘the smallest break in sameness is a call to village eyes’. But the ‘Marisol Committee’, instigated by poetry-loving mayor El Gordo (‘fat one’) manages to create a hoax in which even the most suspicious of residents unknowingly partakes.
Narrated in endearing English gleaned from the 23,000 books left to him by a generous benefactor, El Gordo is a man of contrasts. Bitten by the ‘black dog’ inside, but with a jolly exterior, solitary but craving company, Higot’s mayor embarks on a series of deceptions and secrets that will soon attract the interest of a far more dangerous audience. In what is primarily a love story, Rod Usher has created a delightfully light-hearted fable that politely wags its finger at meddlers. Usher’s style is enchantingly simple, consistently poking fun at the bizarre turns of phrase we English speakers employ: ‘Marisol Ruiz is not what you … call a chicken of the Spring.’ Poor Man’s Wealth harks vaguely back to Louis de Berniere’s magic realist period, if only because of its setting in a Spanish-speaking country ruled by a military junta. But the violent undercurrent that underpins much of de Berniere’s work is absent in Usher’s novel (the junta is a rather pushy background annoyance rather than an evil regime).
As the title suggests, we’re told that riches come not from money but human relationships – and all is not as it seems. Like the fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear, village mad man Bartolomeo is the only one who sees clearly and it is he who is responsible for Higot’s ultimate salvation. Poor Man’s Wealth is a non-taxing, pleasant read, ideal for lazing with by the water this summer.
Amy Roil blogs at Book Witch:
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