Delirium (Restrepo novel)

This article is about the Spanish-language novel. For the 1990s American & Canadian novel by Douglas Anthony Cooper, see Douglas Anthony Cooper.

Delirium is a novel by Colombian author Laura Restrepo. With this book, Restrepo won the prestigious Alfaguara prize (Premio Alfaguara de Novela) in 2004 . Natasha Wimmer's English translation was published in 2007.

Plot summary

Delirium opens squarely on the heels of its main protaganist's, an ex-English Professor turned traveling Purina salesman named Aguilar, discovery that while away on a four day buisness trip his wife Agustina endured an experience that provoked a severe dissolution of her sanity. The book chronicles Aguilar's search for answers and his efforts to rehabilitate his young, beautiful and admittedly singular wife through the use of alternating narrative styles that, as the novel progresses, shed further light on the mysterious events that took place during Aguilar's abscence as well as the nature of Agustina's family and childhood, both of which precipitated Agustina's struggle with mental illness.

As mentioned above Delirium is organized and constructed through the utilization of a narrative pattern that proceeds in the following order: Aguilar, Midas (Agustina's ex-lover), Agustina, Aguilar, third person narration of Nicholas and Blanca Portulinus (Agustina's grandparents). This pattern is repeated throughout the entirety of the novel and helps to streamline and isolate the progression of several distinctly different, albeit entirely connected, storylines that are by no means eager to lend the reader immediate access to their secrets.

Delirium's story begins when Aguilar returns home from a weekend business trip to find several messages on his answering machine asking him to come pick his wife up at a hotel in downtown Bogota. Upon at arriving at the hotel Aguilar finds Agustina in her room with a strange man, existing only as a bombed out shell of her former self. Once home Agustina remains incredibly distant, sometimes even hostile, too preoccupied with abonormal purification rituals and rantings about her dead father's impending visit to the leave the apartment or even get dressed. Driven by his love for his wife, and aided by the unexpected arrival of Agustina's Aunt Sofi, Aguilar refuses to give up, however, and sets out to discover exactly what happened to Agustina.

Aguilar cannot unravel the events of that weekend or resuscitate Agustina's sanity, though, without help and thus he enlists the aid of an alluring hotel employee, named Anita, who lets Aguilar know that whoever his wife was with that weekend their behavior was in no way romantic and provides Aguilar with some of Anita's belongings that she had left at the hotel. Even more integral to the success of Aguilar's investigation, however, is Aunt Sofi. You see Aunt Sofi, in conjunction with Agustina's narratives about her childhood and the narrative depicting Nicholas Portulinus' own struggles with insanity, helps both Aguilar and the reader to better understand Agustina's past, which helps, of course, to explain her present behavior.

As the reader comes to discover Agustina's childhood was not a typical one. She grew up as the sole, attention deprived daughter in an extremely wealthy Coloumbian family, the Londonos, and exhibited signs of mental instability (perhaps inherited from her Grandfather who one night, when under the supervision of Agustina's mother, Eugenia, wandered off and drowned in a nearby river)even as a child. You see Agustina believed that she possesed visionary powers, powers that allowed her to see the future, and in her youth Agustina an her little brother, Bichi, would often perform rituals, often in an attempt to spare her brother from the wrath of her father who would physically and emotionally harass Bichi for his effeminate tendencies. The source of Agustina's power, as she believed, were several photographs that Bichi and her used during their rituals but otherwise kept secret.

Near the climax of the novel Aunt Sofi tells Aguilar the story of the day when the Londono family finally, and inevitably, imploded upon itself. Rightouesly empowered by a particularly severe example of his father's abuse Bichi exposed the aforementioned photographs to the entire family. They were nude pictures of Aunt Sofi that had obviously been taken by Agustina's father, Carlos Vincente (who had been having an affair with Sofi for years) but Eugenia, Agustina's mother, refused to accept the stark reality, scolding Agustina's older brother Joaco for taking nude pictures of the servants instead. In his final act of independence Bichi walked out the front door and Aunt Sofi followed, never to return. That was the day the time bomb began to tick inside Agustina's head.

By the time this particular revelation is at hand Agustina is already on her way to a recovery as instantaneously inexplicable as her illness but there is still one last question to be answered: What took place during that fateful weekend? What sent Agustina's mind spiralling into its terrfying state of Delirium? The answer, of course, can be in Midas McAlister's plot thread.

Running parallel to the rest of the novel Midas' rags to riches to rags storyline tells the tale of Midas, a high class Aerobics Center owner and money launderer for Pablo Escobar, and his equally well to do and similarlily employed friends (one of which happens to be Agustina's brother Joaco). Midas' story intially focuses upon a friendly, albeit high stakes, bet that Midas could organize a sexual situation to arouse his newly paralyzed and consequently impotent frined, Spider. Midas' story soon takes a turn for worse when Spider's thugs, while in the process of attempting to arouse Spider via the means of sadomasochism, inadvertently kill a prostitute (Sara Luz) in Midas' gym. The authorities are soon called into investigate and although they find nothing, Midas has covered his tracks well, he nonetheless feels the need to get away for a relaxing weekend, accepting an invitation from Joaco to come spend the weekend with the Londono family (minus Carlos Vincente Sr. who has since passed away)at their estate in Sasaima.

Once there, however, Midas realizes that, due in large part to her mother's insistency on skirting the truth, Agustina has begun to slip precariously towards her madness, a madness that Midas, being Agustina's former lover, knows all too well. Before the delirium is able to fully set in, however, Midas puts Agustina on the back of his motorcycle and rushes her away from both her faimly and her own deteriorating mind. Midas' heroism does not last long, though, for soon he has hatched a plan to have Agustina, under the pretense of being a divine visionary, come to the Aerobics Center and dispel, once and for all and in front of everyone, that Sara Luz did not disappear in his gym. Unfortunately Midas' plan goes horribly awry when Agustina, upon arriving at the gym, becomes quite erratic, ranting uncontrollably aboutbloodshed and death. By the time Midas is able to extradite her from the situation Agustina is convulsing and hysterical, fully engulfed in her own dementia.

By the time the reader is granted this insight, however, Agustina is already well on her way to recovery and Aguilar has discovered that the man he saw in the hotel room with Agustina was, in fact, not a lover but instead Midas' assistant who was assingned to keep an eye on her until Midas' was able help. Midas is never able to assist, though, for he is soon informed that a business deal with Pablo Escobar had been a setup and was thus forced to give up everything he owned and the lifestyle he had worked so hard to cultivate and go in to hiding at his mother's house in suburban Bogota. The novel nonetheless ends positively, however, with Aguilar returning home one night to find a note written by Agustina, asking him to wear a red tie the next day if he still loved her in spite of all that she had put him through. Aguilar then, with a certain degree of romanticism, wakes up the next morning and dons the reddest tie he could find before heading down the stairs to breakfast.

Characters

• Aguilar: a professor. Agustina's husband
• Agustina: a beautiful, yet unstable, woman, with a troubled past.
• Nicolas Portulinus: Agustina´s grandfather.
• Midas McAlister: Agustina's ex lover. Drug trafficker.

Major themes

• Delirium
• Pablo Escobar