Juan del Val He has had the pleasure of being reunited with the one he was. Another him from not so long ago, from not so many customs and vices, from not so many years ago.
Any intention of autobiography becomes part of a fictionalized life. Memory, in its most personal domain, is what it has, magnifies or reduces to the absurd, praises or forgets, deforms or transforms. The so-called long-term memory builds our identity based on a life of stark contrasts between good times and bad. So to confess openly, as the author did, that this is the novel of his life under the name of another protagonist is, in itself, an act of authenticity.
I do not mean that what is conveyed to us in a "standard" autobiography is false, rather it is about one's perspective on an objectivity never achieved.
Juan del Val was that typical boy who swam between the untimely waters of nihilism or rebellion, depending on the moment, something that has happened to many of us who were young not so long ago (in some cases more than in others 🙂
But what this encounter with the boy who was the author contributes is the intensity. From adolescence to that first bout of responsibility (call it work, call it just waking up from maturity), everything happens in an intense way. And life, as the poet announced, is a treasure, a very valuable baggage of emotions and sensations gathered more than ever during youth.
As happened in the recent novel The look of the fish by Sergio del Molino, the narration of a youth that is determined to be difficult can lead to a person who is wise in his experiences and prepared for everything that has to come. More than anything because surviving oneself, when one makes the occasional companion self-destruction, is not always easy.
And in the end, the humor of the survivors always surprises, accompanied by a kind of orchestra like that of the Titanic, determined to continue making music always, looking for the right symphony even for the inexorable doom.
People who have spent their youth as tightrope walkers probably smile more. Knowing that they have squeezed it without exhausting themselves on it. This book is a good example.
You can buy now It seems like a lie, the new book by Juan del Val, here: