««The last function», by Luis Landero.★★★★
Luis Landero, life is still pure theater
The writer signs a great book structured around a theatrical production that gives him the opportunity to reflect on talent and hope
By Jesús FERRER
Luis Landero’s narrative is characterized by the skillful combination between impeccable realism and a certain symbolic drift, with which characters and situations acquire a particular lyricism of endearing emotion. A slight tone of parody, the tolerant view – of Cervantine origin – on the human condition, timely touches of humor, the classicism of his prose and surprising plot approaches make up this writing of infallible quality and solid trajectory.
“The Last Function” abounds in these references, also providing a good dose of irony about the social consideration of artistic dedications. One day between the winter and spring of 1994, the famous child prodigy of the show returns to San Albín, his hometown in the mountains of Madrid, plagued by unemployment and depopulation; Already mature and disillusioned with life, Tito Gil maintains a last breath of hope with the idea of a theatrical production in which all the neighbors would participate. The best thing about this story are the characters, always halfway between their dreamy illusions and reality: Paula, fantasizing about the idea of being an actress; Bruno, the idealist in love with her; D. Ángel Cuervo, teacher and supporter of Tito; Rufete and Galindo, his friends, always supporting his artistic delusions; or the mysterious municipal employee Fonseca, among other beings fed by fanciful chimeras.
And when they seem to have channeled their aspirations, some unforeseen event frustrates them. “We are all actors in the theater of life,” says the protagonist of this parable about aesthetic concerns, the sense of beauty and the ethical aspect of art. On the other hand, the people trust that this spectacle will bring them out of the prostration in which they consume themselves. There is no lack here of those who compare its inhabitants with the villagers of “Welcome, Mister Marshall” and it is logical, because in both references their protagonists hope that an unusual event will redeem them from the routine subservience of everyday life. This excellent novel travels through the twists and turns of a humorous anecdote, conceiving life as a theatrical performance in which anything is possible.
▲The best
The idea that dreams and illusions must be defended above all else
▼ The worst
No objection to this novel that once again reflects the best writing of its author
««The wildest land» by Lauren Groff. ★★★★
Run girl, lustful men are chasing you
Lauren Groff reinvents the adventure novel in a story with feminist airs applauded in the US and that delves into the roots of that country
By Ángeles LÓPEZ
This fable set in embryonic America reinvents the adventure novel by appealing to the lonely girl in the forest. Lustful men pursue her; The hunters stalk her. Review creation fables, Greek myths, and Grimm’s tales. And the lesson this fleet-footed girl teaches us is that destiny can never be surpassed.
The narrative begins in a winter forest. A servant girl has escaped from a plague-ravaged settlement in the New World. Her hands are bloody, her heart is right, and her head is full of Scripture. She knows they will follow her… and that’s when she starts running, and we with her. Goff details every bodily pain, every food he eats… someone has said that he is a “Cormac McCarthy for girls”, and the truth is that they are authors of sin, liberation, monstrosity and wonder… We will discover that the greatest promise of America is its biggest lie: the past can be erased. The further the young woman gets from the settlement, the more she reveals that lie. Taken from an orphanage and raised as a servant, she spent her life as the toy of an English family, who treat her with the same indignity as her monkey. When the girl runs, she believes she has escaped that cruelty, but when she looks at the landscape she only sees what her teachers have seen. This “page-turner” is a hymn to resistance through which the author leads us; a space where our heroine confronts herself to respond to her narrative: «Nothing is nothing. Just something without a past to start over.” Please start reading Groff.
▲The best
That challenges the legends about the arrival of the Puritans to the United States
▼ The worst
This story involves a permanent “woe”, a constant succession of obstacles
“Vibration”, by José Ovejero ★★★★★
The ghosts of José Ovejero and their forgotten stories
“Vibración”, his new work, is a very remarkable narrative about the echo that the past and History leave in human geographies.
By Sagrario FERNÁNDEZ-PRIETO
José Ovejero’s new book opens with a quote from Joyce’s “Ulysses”: “…And that he himself is the ghost of his own father”, which only makes sense at the end of reading it. We are facing a novel that begins in a cemetery of a small town in the interior of Spain, near a swamp and the remains of a nuclear power plant, a place where there was also a prison camp after a civil war and you can hear hums and murmurs. that arrive cloudy and unconnected from other times.
The author uses the first person and sometimes the third and little by little we perceive that in this way the voices of the victors and the defeated are distinguished, as they recount with their testimonies ancient stories of violence that have marked the present of a people, its structure. social and its cultural manifestations, without forgetting the confrontations between families that are transmitted through generations. The “vibration” of the title is what comes to us from the ghostly, what we perceive from what it is not possible to see but we can feel: a murmur, a breath of cold air. A young couple with a girl arrives in this town in deep Extremadura; Everything strange about the place affects her mother in a special way, and the past, with its ancient stories and mysteries, will end up immersing the reader in a disturbing novel of violence and disappearances.
Ovejero has used family memories to build a powerful physical space, so powerful that it becomes the true protagonist; From it emerge voices, murmurs, dialogues of those who are no longer here and which contrast with the youthful freshness of the newcomers. It is a story about empty Spain that shows how many “stories” were buried under slabs or at the bottom of swamps. A novel of “spectres”, as the initial quote says, which has sometimes reminded us of Juan Rulfo’s masterful book, “Pedro Páramo”, for its evocative images and the creation of a place that moves between the real and the ghostly. .
▲The best
The talent to create an atmosphere of mystery that captivates from the first page
▼ The worst
There is nothing at all that can be objected to this narrative
“A ridiculous story”, by Sandrine Destombes ★★★★
When the serial killer is a horror “artist”
Sandrine Destombes returns with a detective story with serial overtones, but one that she maintains effectively throughout the narrative.
By Lluís FERNÁNDEZ
This is the fourth novel by Sandrine Destombes. And anyone who thinks that “Ritual” follows the path of “The Double Game of the Lassage Family” is wrong. Time has modulated her writing and calmed her torrential soap opera display. This fiction follows the procedural police: a detective and his team investigate some murders and search for the criminal through forensic reports, interrogations and psychological profiles. In this case, a serial killer who cuts off the feet of his victims and throws them into the waters of the Seine. The difference between the ruthless killer Puzzle of “Saw” (2004) and that of “Ritual” is, according to Captain Vaas, that he “beautifies the remains of his victims.”
Faced with his macabre gore installations, the detective describes the murderer as an “artist.” We are facing the version of the serial killer as a conceptual horror artist who sends messages through sacrificial staging. As for the plot, we appreciate the neatness with which the author follows the procedural rules, directed by the captain of the Judicial Police and his team, who tie together the plot threads until the murderer is discovered by chance. It matters little if it is intuited, because the crux of the police procedural is the investigation that discovers the murderer, even if he is unable to find a plausible explanation for the severed feet. Destombes carries the “bateau mouche” of the action with slow narrative efficiency, worthy of turning Captain Vaas and his group into a series.
▲The best
The well-connected structure of the plot until almost the end of the book
▼ The worst
The feuilletonesque resolution with a final, unsmokable, bizarre delirium
2024-02-03 06:34:19
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