I thought this book was interesting and well-written, but I probably would have gotten a lot more out of it if I had gone into it with a background knowledge of Chilean history. It also really read more like creative nonfiction than a novel.

Thank you Netgalley and Highbridge Audio for this advance listener copy in exchange for my honest review.

DNF at 30%. It's not what I was expecting at all. The writing is good, which is why I will give it 3 stars, but the story wasn't appealing to me. I wanted to like it, but I couldn't get into it.

The audio was average. I've listened to better and I've listened to worse.

Unfortunately I didn't really connect with this book so I havegiventhe book 2.5 stars which I rounded up. I liked and enjoyed the sections described the true crimes but I struggle with the flow if this book. Maybe it was because it was wrote similar to the book with the same name and I haven't read nor seen the programmes. It could be that I didn't concentrate enough or that my autism just stopped me understand it because of the unusual writing style. I listened to the audiobook and did really like the narrator and her accent. I just think the flow of the book just didn't work for me. Remember I am just one person and my views will not be shared with others. I always suggest that you download a sample of the book to read and listen to yourself to see if it is right for you. And others seem to really like this book. Ilove true crime books but just couldn't get my head around this book.

Thank you to the author and publishing team for creating a book that I'm sure many true crime fans will love.

Disappearances at the magnitude that citizens had to experience in Pinochet's Chile are unfathomable in their quantity. This novel tracks a fictional documentarian covering the disappearances with particular focus on the true story of a torturer who went to a magazine in 1984 and confessed his crimes. Fernandez then ties these disappearances to old episodes of the Twilight Zone quite effectively.

Read 26% of the way into this book but kept starting and stopping. I had trouble getting into it and figured it was better to review as is. It was written well just not my cup of tea.

Have you ever wondered the life of a contract murder for hire? This book takes a interesting contrast of one of my ultimate favorite shows the twilight zone and compares that to the lives that this infamous contract killer has taken over his career. Well written but heartbreaking and at the same time a page turner. Highly recommend. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The writing in this book is so powerful that it feels wrong not to give it five stars, so I'm just awarding the stars even though I cannot say I enjoyed this book. As someone who looks for a compelling story and meaningful characterization in my novels, I was frustrated by this novel's failure to create real characters or follow any storytelling format. Still, there is no denying that the writing is brilliant and extraordinarily moving.

We are given only the barest hint of a main character: a woman journalist who grew up in Chile during Pinochet's regime and becomes obsessed with an interview subject referred to only as "the man who tortures people." This phrase, "the man who tortures people" is repeated relentlessly throughout the novel, and its ubiquitous use highlights the novel's main theme: that ordinary citizens murdered, disappeared and tortured tens of thousands of people while going about their daily lives. The relative normalcy that was maintained during even the worst of these times is what created the Twilight Zone effect, about which the author offers several excellent metaphors, referring to particular episodes or Rod Serling passages and their takeaway lessons.

The main character sees families protest and/or hold candlelit vigils for their missing family members year after year with no effect. In one particularly poignant scene, she and her mother attend a matinee screening of a documentary about Chile's use of torture during Pinochet's regime. A superhero thriller is playing in the theater a floor above them, and while the protagonist and her mother sit riveted, the only two in the room watching this documentary, explosion sounds from the packed theater above them fill the room they are in. What does this say about us, that we would rather attend a movie full of fake explosions and cartoonish car chases than a movie about the real cost of a dictatorship? The book haunts us with many unstated questions like this one.

"The man who tortures people" explains that he joined the military out of a sense of civic and familial duty and was hopeful and idealistic as a young recruit. He is quickly disabused of any thoughts that his service will have meaning or help people; he is made to participate in secret police operations and eventually to become "the man who tortures people." He explains how other fellow torturers took up the job because it was that or see the rest of their family members killed. No one felt they had any choice. Although "the man who tortures people" eventually escapes and is able to share his truth about the horrors committed by Pinochet's regime, he is forced into permanent exile, a punishment he willingly accepts as penance for the atrocities he committed. He remains committed to telling the truth for the rest of his life, always willing to testify when called upon or to repeat his stories when a new documentary is being made. The main character watches him get old as he tells the truth -- and still the mothers light candles and wait to find out about their missing children, most of them never getting any answers.

This was an enlightening if disheartening book about how ordinary people can be turned into monsters. Having lived through the Trump regime, nothing about this seems incredible to me now..

I am grateful to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to listen to an advanced copy of the audio version of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

The harsh reality of living in the regime of terror and persecution, set in Chile but could be anywhere. The writing is excellent and the events are well researched describing horrific events. The humanity of the book shines through and although we remember the period in history this book brings alive the actual war crimes against people that took place and the effect on the ones left behind. Everyone should read this book and work hard to make sure this can never happen again, anywhere. Narrator was excellent. Thank you #NetGalley for the audiobook.

**please note due to low rating I will not be leaving a public review for this book as I have not paid for it.**

The narrator was fantastic but I struggled to get into the story. It just wasn't for me.

Fascinating novel with much basis in reality. The author interweaves personal histories of life in dictatorship Chile with snatches of science fiction, including many comparisons to the classic television series from which the book draws its title.

The Man Who Tortured People by Nona Fernandez
I could not finish this audiobook but it is my fault and not the fault of the author. I just found the subject matter too depressing. I also think this book might be better in written form rather than audio.

One of the intrinsic horrors of the fates those thousands 'disappeared’ by the regimes of the 1970s and 1980s in the Southern Cone is that of not knowing. One knows the basic outline, that there are detention centers torture sites throughout the country, that unimaginable pain and suffering go on there; but one will never truly know the fate of their loved one, their suffering, their final resting place, or even confirmation of their death. What this book does, quite well, is put a face to the horror in hypnotic, elevated speculations. Our narrator was a child when, in the 1980s, one cog in the Pinochet regime comes forward to a journalist and gives an interview of his experiences, known after as “the man who tortures people.” The narrator, even in the present day thirty-odd years later, fabricates his encounters in the violence just out of view of her own life. The man who tortures people lingers in the background, giving a real story, or at least a snippet of one, to the crimes that haunt our narrator’s mother, or the names on the wall of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. Our narrator imposes humanity upon this torturer-turned-confessor, and inso gives voice and reflection to the complicated nature of memory in a conflict so well hidden. Additionally, as the title implies, we are given constant reference to the mundane, a way of making sense of the surreal aspects of living under a violent dictatorship, and it works really well.

Also, as an aside, it reminded me of how in her book The Undocumented Americans, author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio presents us with the narrative of a man's death in the basement of a building during Hurricane Harvey, with a little mouse, maybe elaborated for our sympathy, and how stories and images allow for much more emotion than dates and names on a page. For Villavicencio, she takes liberties with what could have evoke emotion in her audience feel for an otherwise neglected population, an undocumented immigrant, homeless and addicted to alcohol, but human and tragic and worthy of mourning nonetheless. This book, fictional, is a person groping for explanation or closure with the clues and hints of a purposefully obscured history, but it evokes sympathy and emotion when before there was power in keeping it sterile.

This is not an audiobook for the absent listener — it’s atmospheric, haunting, and different names and spaces are interwoven to the point that it isn’t for casual listening in the grocery store. I really savored this book, and especially loved the ending timeline mixing quotidian with macro-politics, because yes, that’s life, situated among horrors and birthdays.

Thank you so much to HighBridge Audio and #Netgalley for an advanced copy of the audiobook in exchange for my honest review. #theTwilightZone

This was an interesting book and a relatively quick one to listen to while doing around the house chores or are otherwise occupied. The narrator, Natasha Wimmer, did a fantastic job. I really liked listening to her read.

Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales is the man who tortured people. He is also responsible for “the disappeared.” You will find out that he is responsible for a great many other things. It is here where he will tell his story to the 13-yr old girl who has grown up now; who pursued him ever since she saw him on the cover of Cauce magazine under the headline: “I Tortured People.” Fernandez is that girl who recalls episodes of the television series, “The Twilight Zone”, narrated by Rod Sterling in the ‘70s, episodes that told of fantastical and bizarre stories. Those episodes were all she could think of as the man who tortured people confessed his sins to her. As people in the neighborhood watch the activities of criminals day after day, surprise turns into familiarity; cries of torture sessions coexist with music coming from radios; prisoners going in and out of the gate become part of the landscape like the mailman delivering the daily mail. Do we really become numb to the evil occurring around us? Is this a failure in character of we as human beings or a technique of survival? You will find that you will have more questions than answers when you have reached the end of this fascinating book.

<b>How suppression hurts oppressors sometimes equally as the oppressed, but also how authority requires both brutality and complacency. The flight into a mental twilight zone by enormous parts of Chilean society told in a documentary manner.</b>
<i>Your imagination is clearer than my memory.</I>

This book feels as a modern equivalent of this painting by Goya, featuring an execution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_of_May_1808
Harrowing and intense, I listened this book in one go and was both deeply uncomfortable and eager to see how [author:Nona Fernández|5296618] would bring the story further.

The narrator of the audiobook initially sounded a bit like Siri, which is not a good thing, but the story of [book:The Twilight Zone|53317468] is told in a rather detached and documentary like style that in a sense was maybe complemented by the robotic narration.
"I can imagine it perfectly" or "I know, I am not imagining" come back quite often.
In essence the book tells of recent Chilean history and in particular the defection of a soldier first class whose testimony on how he tortured people served as a catalyst to the down fall of the Pinochet regime. The level of nuance Fernández manages to convey, with resistance people turning out to be turncoats and tortures taking actions of enormous heroism, is impressive. The violence, with severed fingers to make identification harder, torture, shootings in the dessert, machine gun fire on people herded together in stadiums; the subject matter is harrowing.
People end up being as broken as Winston at the end of 1984, with the mother of the narrator turning to antidepressants and therapists to combat the trauma of the wider society.
<I>How many faces can a human being contain?</I> is something that is wondered, and people indeed turn from neighbours or innocent conscripts to murderers. But as indicated in the banner of this review, the suppression is corrosive to the suppressors as well, however harsh they are threatened to not show human kindness to their prisoners.

I was reminded of [book:When We Cease to Understand the World|53972214] while reading this book, also an excellent work engaging with history and morality in an almost documentary like manner.
The Twilight Zone is associative (drawing heavily on the popculture references of the childhood of the author) and not for one moment backs away from uncomfortable scenes and considerations. Easy narratives of civilians all being rebels and the only bad people being in uniforms are rejected, and the world painted is not just very black but also profoundly grey in hues. 4.5 stars rounded down, a harrowing and impressive read.

3 stars

A writer in present-day Chile reflects on atrocities of the Pinochet regime as she goes about her daily life. This has the feel of a creative nonfiction memoir more than a historical fiction novel.

[What I liked:]

•The content, exposing some of the atrocities of the Pinochet regime, is important. The writer does a good job of telling the stories of a few individuals, grounding them in detail, making them personal, not letting them get lost in the statistics of a mass tragedy.

•The tone of the book is respectful towards the victims, memorializing them rather than sensationalizing their tragedy.

•The book seems to be very well researched, & the writer makes it clear when facts are known & when the narrator is speculating while trying to fill in the gaps of how things happened.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•I did not like the writing style of this book. This is a personal opinion, & I do not mean to imply that the book is poorly written or edited, because it is not. However, I found the prose at times overly sentimental, burdened by belabored metaphors, & full of repetition that did not feel poetic to me. For example, there is a passage that reads approximately, “…The woman with the dog is walking the dog. The man who jogs is jogging…”, & on it goes to describe a day in the MC’s neighborhood. It feels too wordy to me.

•This book is advertised as historical fiction, & I guess it technically is. I was expecting a narrative that focused on the “man who tortured people “ & the events of his involvement in the historical events the book centers on, but instead the book focuses on the daily life of a woman in contemporary Chile who is researching his story. It focuses on her reflections & feelings about the atrocities, her son, her mother, her career, etc., intertwined with glimpses of her research. My disappointment with this book is partly because it’s not what I expected, but yeah, I didn’t sign up to read this random woman’s memoir.

CW: torture, murder, mental health issues, domestic violence

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

The author looks at the secret service agent who served during the Pinochet dictatorship and admitted to torturing people. Readers will find that the book's title is a nod to the surreal events that are documented and so much of the unknown that she must read between the lines and imagine in order to share the full story. The use of the "Twilight Zone" also refers to the popular TV Show, and she skillfully weaves in pop culture references and literary examples as a way to juxtapose the secret service agent's actions with fictional events.

The story was difficult to listen to at times, but was beautifully narrated. I think I would have preferred to read the book in print, as there was so much information and detail to take in. The whole book invites rereading, pauses, and taking the time to really ingest what you are reading.

I know that this book has been highly recommended in literary circles, and I agree that it deserves high praise for both the story and the storytelling angle that works so well.

This is one of those audiobooks where the narration got in the way of evaluating the book. The narrator has an odd cadence to his reading that made listening difficult. His tempo was slow, but, of course, the NetGalley app continues to fail at changed speeds. So, one that I did not finish.

It's funny how I was shying away from the French translation of this book, but when I got approved to listen to it in English, I thought "why the hell not?" and gave it a go. I was not familiar with a lot of the historical references and it was interesting to look for information online. I'm glad it wasn't too long a book though, because while I thought it was (at least) well translated, some parts of the story were not that interesting to read. I wish I had liked this a little bit more, especially given the fascinating subject. Perhaps the execution lacked a little bit of oomph, or perhaps I was too tired to get it.