Book Review - One Hundred Guinea Pigs
Peru made international headlines in 2022 when Ana Estrada, suffering from a degenerative muscle disease, was granted the right to end her life without her doctors facing legal punishment. Peruvian author Gustavo Rodríguez touches on this case in One Hundred Guinea Pigs, his bittersweet topical novel about assisted dying, which remains illegal in Peru. Originally published as Cien Cuyes in 2023, it went on to win the $175,000 Alfaguara Prize for fiction that same year and is Rodríguez’s first book to appear in English, in a fine translation by Daniel Hahn.
In the opening pages we find Eufrasia Vela, a hardworking carer, on her way to tend to Doña Carmen, a lonely widow living in the affluent Lima district of Miraflores. It’s a far cry from Simbal, the village in the Andean foothills where Eufrasia was born. She takes on the care of Carmen’s neighbour, Jack Harrison, a retired doctor stoically enduring cancer and facial paralysis with the help of a whisky bottle and his beloved jazz. Later she finds employment in the nursing home where a former client, Doña Pollo, now resides. There Eufrasia meets the friends who call themselves The Magnificent Seven.
A love of film and music crosses class divisions and is the emotional glue that unites Rodríguez’s characters. For Eufrasia, films open up a new world and provide answers to pressing questions, while the residents enjoy the memories revived by old favourites: “the recollection of that blaze of being truly alive”.
The residents’ family members rarely visit them, whereas Eufrasia, a single mother, sees more of her clients than she does her own son Nicolás. She is a benevolent presence who genuinely feels for her frail charges. They, in turn, take advantage of her compassion by persuading her to enable them to die with dignity. Doña Carmen is the first to ask her to help her “sleep”, and Eufrasia is initially reluctant. When Carmen insists on paying, Eufrasia recalls the words of an uncle: “[A]ll you need are ten guinea pigs and you can start a business.” The doctor is more circumspect, meticulously planning his demise and supplying the means before involving Eufrasia.
Rodríguez’s rich descriptions of multicultural Lima and Peru’s rural landscapes lend the novel a cinematic quality. The image of six elders packed into an antiquated Volkswagen Kombi, nodding their heads to an Abba soundtrack on their way to a rendezvous with death, is vividly conveyed.
Although largely about ageing and dying, Rodríguez’s layered novel, his authorial voice occasionally audible, never feels mawkish or sentimental. He treats his subject with both warmth and humour. We do not mourn the passing of his senior characters, all of whom have lived long, privileged lives. The real poignancy comes with the story’s final, unexpected twist. As well as his fiction, including books for children, Rodríguez has worked in advertising and as a journalist and podcaster known for his social-impact campaigns.
Throughout, Rodríguez critiques Peru’s contradictions — its economic inequalities, social fractures and political turmoil — and an increasingly conservative society. He has said he wants his fiction “to create an alternative reality not just as an escape, but also as a path towards empathy”.
Rodríguez targets too conservative Catholicism, particularly how its restrictive mores impact homosexuality and reproductive rights. Meditating on the latter, the doctor rails against a society “that promotes a black market for rich girls to have successful abortions for which they pay a fortune while the poor girls bleed to death” when they attempt the same thing.
Rodríguez dedicates this book to his father-in-law Jack Harrison, who, he says, died with dignity. For Rodríguez, “writing about death in general and old age in loneliness was an excuse to keep talking to [him]”. One Hundred Guinea Pigs proves a surprisingly life-affirming read and a quietly persuasive argument for legalising assisted dying.
Orignally published by the Financial Times