The versatility of Elia Barceló makes a retrospective of his work a complete bibliographic reference. Under the same authorship, we find a diversity of proposals that show a brilliant capacity. From its beginnings in science fiction to its transitions between historical fiction, the noir genre, suspense or a later "magical" realism. Magical in the sense that the fantastic reminiscences of the author's craft seem to assail the plot at times.
And the way of putting it all together, the way in which their stories become unmistakably his own, stems from a narrative tension always facilitated from the plot itself and completed with a structure in which each chapter throws an inalienable hook for the next.
In «El echo de la piel» we find ourselves (as on other occasions in recent works by Barceló and some other authors such as Joel dicker), with the two planes advancing in parallel from different times. Disparate chronologies magically intertwining at times, anticipating that final knot that will forever link past and present events. With the taste of destinies and lives scripted to give a transcendental meaning to everything that happens.
Sandra accepts Don Luis's proposal to write her mother's biography. Ofelia Arráez created a whole emporium around women's footwear and now Sandra, chosen as a biographer, perhaps not so coincidentally, is passionately embarking on that journey to the past that is the whole recomposition of a life. Nothing less than the fascinating time of the great Ophelia.
From the outset, Sandra could imagine that the great Ophelia had to fight valiantly against adverse circumstances. Her condition as a woman would require very great efforts to become what she was. But beyond the buried feminist claim that could base the biography, Sandra goes deeper into the lights and shadows of Ofelia's days. Days that are recovering new light between photographs, documents, testimonies and disturbing discoveries that point to any alternative existence that in the end writes the most certain about Ofelia, the unknown.
It is in the impossible symbiosis between past and present for two such distant characters that Elia Barceló implements her narrative genius, that mastery of all resources in favor of the plot. Because things go far beyond the mere advance in parallel between what happened to Ofelia and what is happening with Sandra.
The truth of the past is always hidden between what may have been documented and what is remembered by those who can still give testimony. But sometimes the time plans seem to agree to propose a new path. The spiral of time is conformed into a loop in which Sandra is able to see everything with a realism that no longer only concerns the subject of study on which to close the biography of Ofelia, but also appears as something essential for her life.
Discovering the real Ophelia among the accumulation of opposing versions is to abound in the contradictions typical of all life, including that of Sandra. And the great secrets of the brilliant woman are completely opening for a Sandra made a privileged researcher towards a reality very different from what is known.
You can now buy the novel El eco de la piel, the new book by Elia Barceló, here: