If you recently spoke of «Everything else was silence«, The first novel by the journalist and prominent columnist Manuel de Lorenzo, it is now time to tackle a new literary debut by another great young journalist: Manuel Jabois.
And the truth is that the coincidences are also prolonged in the exercise of a sincere and open narrative. Committed, yes, but from the most existential notion that navigates over the contradictions of living. The simple intention of addressing the most peremptory truths about the magical and the tragic always augurs an emotional depth in the midst of any action.
And action there certainly is. Always around the lives of the children Tambu and Elvis. Around them, the paradoxical and the strange, from the overflowing imagination of childhood, serves the whole of that balance between childhood concerns oriented towards the fantastic of a world to discover and the harshness with which that world can endeavor to undo the childhood days like a light mist.
He has also lost his father in the most tragic way. At ten years of age, it is difficult to imagine how such an impact can fit into a child's life. But what we can guess from this story is that childhood paradise continues to claim its space, complicated as it may seem. Denial is a phase of the human being in the face of the tragic. But in the state of childhood that denial is the most natural and continuous response.
Only, in addition, with the lack of a father on many occasions a North is lost. And it is intended to reach new forced paradises since that imposition of the end of childhood. Between Tambu, his sister Rebe and Elvis, we dealt with relationships that were not always easy in an improvised family after the first two were orphaned. And we enjoy that idea of the first time of almost everything, of discoveries and the naive sense of infinity of moments that only has a place in childhood. Only that reality runs parallel, with its fateful becoming determined to write the boys' own destiny.
There is much of the author's particular symbolism in the story, probably nods to his own past. But when the particular universe is exposed with the frankness of this story, that general impression of the human about guilt, about fears, about the idea of the fragile and the only possible formula of looking forward to survive ourselves is reached. .
You can now buy the book Malaherba, the first novel by Manuel Jabois, here: