3.5 -

Brief but expansive in scope. The Bullet Swallower has a lot of ideas but when all is said and done, it's a rather simple tale that follows Antonio's final journey. His actions affect his family and the rest of his bloodline and they're contextualized by the colonization, racism, and violence that affected Mexico in the 1800s. In this Antonio becomes a different type of western anti-hero. A more overt version of what the other books that inspired it.
The parallel timeline in the 1960s is interesting on the surface but the book doesn't do much with it apart from the obvious tackling of how the past affects the present. Some magical realism elements and questions of myth-making again on the surface are interesting. Just don't feel these concepts are deeply explored the way they could be.

Interesting for the most part.