“The rules of the Mikado”, by Erri De Luca ★★★★
Erri de Luca: when chopsticks can predict the future
The writer addresses the current world through the meeting of an old man and a gypsy in a story with a political background
Erri De Luca (Naples, 1950) is a unique type of writer; Self-taught, employed in a thousand trades, socially committed to the most disadvantaged, critical of all aesthetic snobbery, at almost forty he published his first novel, “Not Now, Not Here” (1989), in which, evoking his Neapolitan childhood, he showed and to the characteristic features of his later narrative: impeccable realism of manners, persistent defense of freedom and justice, clear awareness of the absurd everyday life, and the unpredictable chance in all human development. His recent novel, “The Rules of the Mikado”, collects these references through the encounter between two unique characters: a gypsy teenager who has run away from home fleeing from a planned arranged marriage, and an elderly watchmaker who is fond of that game, the mikado. , where chopsticks interpret reality and foretell the future; Here they are the pretext for these beings, exchanging experiences, remembering anecdotes and affirming convictions, to show their generational differences and their views on everything around them.
Letters and documents
The first part of the novel forms an agile dialogue between the two, while in the second the girl has become an adult and remembers, with letters and documents, that meeting, which made her mature and find her place in the world. This story is tinged with melancholy, facing the intensity of feelings against the devastating passage of time: «You fall in love with a girl and you find her again many years later. You recognize her, she doesn’t. You have changed, your hair has fallen out, your face is sunken, yes, but her eyes: is it possible that she does not recognize the eyes that adored her? And words that challenge our present are not ignored: “War annihilates, devours and, once it starts, it needs no cause.” This is a novel that exemplarily combines plot fiction with the essayistic defense of social tolerance, freedom of thought and trust in the future.
The best: The portrait of the protagonists through their agile and extensive dialogue
Worst: Nothing notable here, being a novel of original conformation and structure.
By JESUS FERRER
“The Holy Company”, by Lorenzo G. Acebedo ★★★★★
Be careful with the botafumeiro of the Cathedral of Santiago
Detective Gonzalo de Berceo, the character of Lorenzo G. Acebedo (which is a pseudonym), returns in an intrigue worthy of his previous work
Whoever writes this is fascinated by mysteries. The one on these pages begins with the identity of its own author, who already pleasantly surprised us with his first novel, “The Silos Tavern.” We do not know who he is, but we do know that he abandoned theological studies for monastic life, and this, in turn, for the love of a woman. Will it be true? Why do you use an anagram of Gonzalo de Berceo’s name? Could it be a woman? Or perhaps from a group of authors as in the case of Carmen Mola? I venture to think that he is a man because of the workmanship and architecture of his narrative. If we give way to the work, which is what is cool, we find that the clergyman Gonzalo de Berceo arrives in Santiago de Compostela to celebrate the jubilee, but, above all, because he wants to discover a new variety of grape, the Mencía, with the that a friend makes a new wine.
The cathedral is still under construction, but the colorful Portico of Glory has been completed, and you can witness the magic of the botafumeiro swinging from side to side of the building’s transept. The devotion, the music and the vapors that emanate from the accelerated artifact generate a situation of collective mysticism that provokes wandering behavior in the pilgrims. Thus, an archdeacon starts a song and advances towards the space reserved for the enormous censer to receive it with open arms… to be destroyed by it, as it could not be otherwise.
Appearances
Gonzalo de Berceo thus begins an investigation to try to understand what has happened in the cathedral of Santiago and discovers that it has not been the first, nor will it be the last, of several inexplicable acts that are happening, such as the appearance of the feared Santa Compaña (a procession of souls from purgatory typical of Galicia), which is taking the lives of several clerics. It is a frenetic story where suspense and humor are interwoven very well with terror and historical wisdom, presenting the appearance of a young poet: the future king Alfonso X the Wise. Essential.
The best: Challenges of logic, coded messages… the text is full of challenges for the reader
Worst: That the reader is left with the anxiety of whether or not there will be a next adventure of the cleric detective.
By Angeles LOPEZ
“Damascus Station”, David McCloskey ★★★
A thriller about Al-Assad that knows little
David McCloskey builds an action work set in the Syrian war and under the threat of biological weapons
The Islamic terrorist has become the new nemesis of the post-communist spy novel. Started by Eric Ambler in “Blackmail in the East” (1972) and modernized by Terry Hayes in “I Am Pilgrim” (2014). A model followed by former CIA secret agents posted in embassies in the Middle East. If in “The Year of the Locust”, Terry Hayes returns to the adventure of the CIA agent operating in the restricted access zone that joins the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, fighting against a monstrous terrorist who wants to take over the world to its complete extinction, in David McCloskey’s debut feature, “Damascus Station”, he focuses on the Syrian civil conflict and the bacteriological war with sarin gas.
Assets and moles
Both writers follow a fairly similar model of international intrigue: absolute prominence of the CIA agent in an enemy zone, his camouflage tactics and survival in a country whose enemy is a fanatical jihadist endowed with totally supreme cruelty. They are differentiated by style and tactics. David McCloskey was a former CIA analyst who reported to senior White House officials. Reason why, “Damascus Station” is a story excessively attached to the tactics of recruiting assets to turn them into moles in the circles of the dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Much of the novel has a discursive tone, focused on the teaching of endless surveillance detection tactics and a forbidden love story between the Syrian agent and the CIA spy. “Damascus Station” is like a seized car, which moves in fits and starts, which delays the action and advances with intense moments of suspense, but it stalls. There is plenty of straw and perhaps there is a lack of a consistent plot that articulates the story and achieves the tension of the great spy novel that it promises. Only at the end, the action takes over and shakes the reader who is looking for a fast-paced action thriller.
The best: The evil Syrians of the counterintelligence service and the torture described
Worst: Dedicate the bulk of the novel to explaining recruitment and surveillance tactics
By Lluís FERNÁNDEZ
“The Poor Relatives” Rafael Gumucio ★★★★★
Between an incestuous relationship and an angry WhatsApp group
Rafael Gumucio tells the intrastory of a typical Chilean family, with her talents and her miseries, led by an old artist
The family, the Chilean family, or rather, like any family, constitutes one of the pillars of society. Which also means that it is the preferred setting for many writers to place a family story in the middle of a social history and even, if possible, in the middle of the history of a country. The Chilean writer Rafael Gumucio (Santiago de Chile, 1970) has always understood it this way and that has been, in some way, the matrix of his work, a work that is made up of many novels and in which family stories have always been present. in the foreground, linked, in most cases, to the history of that country that Gumucio approaches with a mocking tone, with a humor that can be as uncomfortable as it is corrosive.
Such is the case of his new novel, “The Poor Relatives”, in which the author of “Premature Memories” and “My Grandmother” intrudes into a typical Chilean family of rich and half-hippie people, made up of eleven siblings and led by by a father who was once a notable sculptor but whom the years have made him lose his mind. And then there are his children, gathered in a WhatsApp conversation, thinking about what to do with the patriarch, especially now that he has fallen in love and is having sexual relations with his sister.
Confusion
With a powerful ear to record the brothers’ various ways of speaking and camouflage himself behind them, Gumucio penetrates the psychology of the characters and plays with them, in a voiced dialogue in which everyone interrupts each other without Gumucio naming them and without May this lead to confusion. “The Poor Relatives” thus becomes an ironic, but deeply uncomfortable fresco of a typical Chilean family. A novel that can be read as an incestuous tragedy or also as a comedy, laughing, hopelessly, out loud.
The best: Gumucio’s absolute hearing, capable of registering different voices and ways of speaking
Worst: Nothing to question this novel in which comedy is mixed with tragedy
By DIEGO GÁNDARA
