Villa Pacifica

Kapka Kasaboka

Penguin

Otago Daily Times, 2010

Kapka Kassabova’s latest novel, Villa Pacifica , draws on both her own experience as a travel writer and the familiar traditions of magic realism. 

When Ute and her husband Jerry arrive at the Villa Pacifica, a hotel and eco-sanctuary in an unnamed South American coastal town, they find themselves in a lush, decaying limbo.  Intending to stay for one or two days while Ute explores the village and surrounds for her latest travel guide, she finds that hours, days and even years elide until it is impossible to know when they are, let alone how long they have been there. 

Distracted from her task by regrets and uncertainties about her own life choices, Ute is further unsettled by her husband’s self-absorbed pursuit of his own writing, her uncontrollable attraction to one of the keepers at the animal sanctuary, and by the fellow guests (particularly the loud and offensive American millionaire, Max).  In this liminal setting where reality is elusive, time fluid, and people regress toward their most primordial selves, violence is inevitable.  But is it she or they who are descending into madness?

Kassabova describes the Villa as the main character of this novel, and she captures the essence of the hotel and its fecund, sensual, and untamed surrounds wonderfully.  Unfortunately, the human characters proved far more two-dimensional and predictable than the place itself.  Having evocatively created a space where anything is possible, she leaves too many opportunities unexplored.  The plot that does eventually unfold paled in comparison the paths my own imagination took through the tropical jungle and left me frustrated for what might have been.