Everything else was silence, by Manuel de Lorenzo

A first film like this one by Manual of Lawrence it always has something of singular emptiness in the full satisfaction of its creator. Because at the launch of that novel that has emerged as a first approach to that unfathomable job of the writer, the reasons for writing appear into the abyss of specialized criticism and the opinion of the readers. And one has left so much before that word that marks the end of its history, that all the following is expected as a total exhibition, like ecce homo awaiting the verdict of the people.

The wear and tear of writing a novel can end up as a single foray into this type of prose. Cases like "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde "The Catcher in the Rye" from the controversial Salenger, «Pedro Páramo» by Juan Rulfo or even "The conspiracy of fools" that wore down John kennedy toole.

It does not have to be the case of Manuel de Lorenzo. In fact, it is more than likely that this well-known "alternative" journalist, whom we can follow in his most authentic view between the humorous and the critical in JotDown magazine, has simply opened his literary path already intuited in his articles. And the truth is that this first novel seems to be brimming with great stories that could lead to those constant spin-offs from which every good author is generating new and varied stories.

For "Everything else was silence," Manuel places us at the center of a relationship between Julián and Lucía. Both undertake a journey and in each one of them we find the very different way in which they undertake that real transition that ends up leading them to very different and distant spaces than the simple destination of the journey undertaken.

Perhaps that is the best narrative support in which to end up dumping vital tensions, doubts, fears, the most intense drives. I am referring to travel, to the combination of changing times and spaces that travel offers to dislodge ourselves and face everything that we carry inside.

What Manuel offers in this story that moves through the three planes of a relationship: coexistence on the one hand and the inner universes of the two characters, sometimes changing, debtors of fear and creditors of limited time, is balanced with an action reasonably close. We all have to face those fears raised by losses. We all face crises in which we doubt the footholds we decided to take at the time to continue our ephemeral steps around the world.

In this story we travel, especially we travel in the fullest sense of the word. We move from Madrid to the Galician roots of the author but we end up crossing common landscapes, very recognizable. And at the end of the journey we have no choice but to assume the truth of everything we read, with the chill that this existentialist attunement of our human condition supposes, given to chance, dependent and yearning for independence, fascinated by the fleetingness of life and gripped by how bad it can get and that ends up taking shape in those obsessions of ours ...

Lucia and Julián are fragile, like all of us. And this is the story of the journey towards its truth.

You can now buy the book Everything Else Was Silence. Manuel de Lorenzo's first novel, here: