Nothing more opportune to start as summer reading than Mentideros de la memoria (Tusquets) by the Mexican writer Gonzalo Celorio, narrator and essayist. Here the vitality is given in these portraits of the most representative writers of Latin American literature, such as Arreola, Borges, Cortázar, Rulfo, Bryce Echenique, Augusto Monterroso or García Márquez. The interest is not only in what we are told but in the adventure of contacting them. And we continue reading it with the same charm with which we read his novels.
Powerful as always or more than ever Rafael Reig in The river of ashes (Tusquets), here without the need to break other books of his and focused on the hectic life of the narrator, marked by his attraction to gin and his erotic fixation, in the one that chases and is chased by her breasts and nipples. I do not have much more to say, but to recommend the reading of what is possibly the most attractive novel by the author.
The fascinating imagination of Gonzalo Suárez in the collection of stories The Blue Cemetery (Random House Literature) takes us down other paths. Cervantes Professor Grubb, person and character, is a transformer of reality, who manipulates the plausible and the unusual without ever falling into pure invention. We are facing the triumph of invention.
A very pleasant surprise is Xita Rubert’s novel Mis dias con los Kopp (Anagrama). Within this line of writing of the strangeness that seems to accompany us in the current narrative, details are now hidden from us to plunge us into the fullness of the unsaid, where more is hidden than revealed. Through a varied gallery of characters, what is fascinating is the naturalness with which the furthest from reality is experienced.
Few writers have caused a greater impact on the current narrative than the Argentine Camila Sosa. Las malas has been followed by the collection of stories I’m a fool for loving you (Tusquets), both marked by the intensity of the prose and the explicit references to sex. The writer is always present, giving more truth to truly unusual situations, with shocking phrases. Naturally, the autobiographical tone is what gives strength to the story, with all that is morbid about the narrator’s life.
One of the most remarkable traits of the Mexican writer Margo Glantz is how she knows how to transform her deep erudition into highly narrative material, marked by provocation, to take us to unusual situations. Appearances (Firmamento) is a very complex novel, where the ever-present sex has as background everything that religion has of profane and sacred. Glantz has gone further than ever before in these visions of masturbation, undressing, penetration, flogging.
The author of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Hagiography or autobiography? she is deeply familiar with everything related to religion. And very especially with mysticism. But there is also the image of this girl with her legs spread so close to the Balthus model. And in the emphasis on the erotic there is not a little pornographic. And everything must be read within the attraction for the extravagant and the unusual. And also, this authentic pornographic exhibition must be read with all its light-hearted humor. Margo Glantz is here more Glantz than ever.
The pandemic caused a general panic in the book sector: it seemed that the system was going to collapse. They were months of solidarity, sustained effort, of various inventions. The thing did not end so badly and when the situation began to normalize we had several hosed off books that, at the time, had been retained. Everyone wanted to take advantage of the situation and talk about him. In short: we have spent two years of stress, with many books to choose from, new authors and intense trumpeting that culminated in Sant Jordi, which if it had not been the only rainy day of the year in a country where it never rains , it would have been historic (yet it worked very well).
We are now in a moment of some laziness, the result of the tensions experienced and the lack of paper. Not bad either: we will have a summer to recover, reread and pay attention to books without so many media flashes.
The first books I want to recommend are two reissues: Contes urbans de Mercè Ibarz (Anagrama) brings together two volumes of stories: A la ciutat en obres and Febre de carrer. They represented the passage from the original world of Saidí, which has been recovered and updated in the Tríptic de la terra, towards a new complex urban experience, of reality and memory, material and spiritual. Many readers, who were not there when these books were published in 2002 and 2005, will discover them and recognize themselves in them.
Eduard Màrquez shares Mercè Ibarz’s interest in the great global issues raised by the Bosnian war. He appears in La palma de blat by Ibarz and in El silencio dels arbres by Eduard Màrquez, which L’Altra incorporates into its catalog twenty years after the first edition. It is a short, symbolic and human novel about suffering and the role of art – music – in the great collective dramas. The house of creation has its doors open when the war has returned to Europe
Two novelty books come out of the pandemic: Sense futur by Joaquim Carbó (Destiny) and not as far away as it seems, Tardes de diumenge by Vicenç Altaió (Comanegra). Carbó is one of the seniors of Catalan literature, he is ninety years old and sees how his personal world disappears. The collective cultural disasters also affect him, but he tries not to get bad blood. It is the final recognition of Carbó as an author for adults. Vicenç Altaió has gone from hyperactivity as a cultural manager and, lately, a film actor, to a more or less contemplative life. From this position he reviews forty years of culture, from Tàpies and Brossa to chef Paco Pérez. With an equivalent purpose of recapitulation, although caustic, Albert Roig makes his balance in Els posseïts (L’Altra) with the referents of Blai Bonet, Gabriel Ferrater, J.V. Foix and Joan Vinyoli.
And now, the action books. The one I have read with more pleasure is La measure de l’home by Hèctor Rivadeneyra Moll, Javier Calvo’s heteronym. It is edited by Males Herbes. It has been defined as an instant classic and it fits like a glove. It is the current world projected into the future and it is the classic space of science fiction, as if it had just been released. You have already heard me speak in recent weeks about simple literature, about human problems. If you like it, I recommend Matrioxques by Marta Carnicero Hernanz (Quaderns Crema) that connects the impossibility of having a child with the drama of conceiving it by force, and La llista de les coses impossibles by Laura Gonzalvo (Columna) about accidents that disrupt the small, spoiled and bourgeois life.
