The New York Times - Larry Rohter
…droll and erudite…With all of [the] undercurrents and subterranean connections, Sudden Death might seem Pynchonesque but for its tone, which is mischievous and picaresque rather than paranoid and foreboding. For Mr. Enrigue, unlike for Marx, history doesn't repeat itself "the first time as tragedy, then as farce": Instead, history is imbued with farce even in the first go-round…This playfulness extends to the novel's form and language…[Enrigue's] approach has both great entertainment value and intellectual appeal, especially as a corrective to a Eurocentric view of history…Sudden Death is a splendid introduction to Mr. Enrigue's varied body of work…
From the Publisher
"[T]he reader can get lost in the profusion of historical figures." ---Publishers Weekly
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"[T]he reader can get lost in the profusion of historical figures." —Publishers Weekly
Library Journal
12/01/2015
In this award-winning novel, Mexican-born, New York-based Enrigue weaves history and speculation into several narrative threads, focusing primarily on three sets of tennis (substituting as a duel over a matter of honor) between the Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Quevedo in 1599. A second stream aggregates a plethora of historical figures in a vivid re-creation of the intrigues and corruption of the Counter-Reformation, but Caravaggio, in many of whose paintings decapitation figures prominently, and Hernán Cortés command the most attention. The author also adds veracity by inserting essays about the history of tennis. Finally, Enrigue traces three topics throughout: four tennis balls made from Anne Boleyn's hair, a scapular extracted from the Aztec emperor Cuauhtémoc's skin, and a feather miter that a Nahuatl artist sends to the Pope. As the author admits in a metafictional aside, this is a "book with a lot of back and forth, like a game of tennis," with the title referring to both the outcome of this tennis match and decapitation as a method of swift execution. VERDICT Readers will be intrigued by the conglomeration of characters and events but will be either delighted or frustrated in guessing the historically accurate from the fabricated owing to the author's effective conviction. [See Prepub Alert, 8/10/15.]—Lawrence Olszewski, North Central State Coll., Mansfield, OH
MARCH 2016 - AudioFile
Listeners find themselves in a mind-bending tale set in the sixteenth century. This rich, eclectic mix of fact and fiction includes a variety of historical characters spread across the globe, who provide narrator Robert Fass with the challenge of voicing a wide and diverse cast. His dry delivery style perfectly complements the whimsical nature of the story. He neither hams it up nor gives dramatic emphasis to the darker scenes. His approach allows the wonderfully eccentric text to speak for itself, enhanced by his authentic pronunciations as scenes cross international borders. This is a one-of-a-kind listen for people looking to try something a little different. K.J.P. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
