The 3 best books by the amazing Víctor del Arbol

If there is an author who has broken into the most recent Spanish literary scene, that is Victor of the Tree. Its literary quality encompasses everything, from absolutely captivating plots, to a very rich lexicon that dominates and captures to give richness to descriptions (the right ones), as well as characters. A writer offering an inscrutable perfect balance between psychological depth and lightness in action, perhaps the long-awaited mixture to satisfy purists of literature and avid readers of entertaining narrative with sediment.

My approach to this author was by recommendation. The first book I read about him was The eve of almost everything, which just came out in those days. For me, a staunch reader of Stephen KingFinding certain parallels between the characterizations of characters was a real discovery. The themes may differ notoriously, but that drawing of characters under whose skin you can get to beat with them is a remarkable virtue of these two authors, and of few others ...

In this case, to present my usual 3 best books, I start with a certain advantage. The birth of the Victor del Arbol writer It didn't come that long ago, so his longed-for prosperous career isn't full of books yet.

Top 3 recommended novels by Victor del Arbol

The eve of almost everything

Having already read and reviewed this book at the time, I have doubted whether to cite it in this list. But it would not be consistent if I did not put it at the top of what the author has written so far. I bring back here a part of the review that I made at the time in this same space:

From the search to repair some victims of the Argentine dictatorship, until the impossible recomposition of mothers who lose their children, going through the stories of children forced out of childhood brutally and by sensitive souls that they did not know, nor do they even know, nor can they find their place in the world.

Undoubtedly a tragic cosmos of personalities that flash in the deep darkness, with the now usual literary resource of flashbacks that turns the story into a puzzle, everything slightly removed (like a good cocktail) thanks to the police investigation aspect that the good de Ibarra is concerned with personifying as a common thread for so many and so many vespers of almost everything.

Only at the end, an undeniable point of hope seems to convey the calm of some of the survivors themselves. Those who after completely breaking their soul against the rocks can chart a new voyage.

Those who are gone and those who, despite everything, continue to cling to the past seem to remain as we found them, mired in those evens that never announce a holiday.

The sadness of the samurai

There are evocative titles that you really don't know why they are. This is one of those cases. Parties with an idea of ​​exotic, remote sadness ... I don't know, something like that. But the thing is, it works, it ends up getting your attention.

The lawyer María Bengoechea comes to the fore for having put Inspector César Alcalá behind bars, in a resounding case in the Barcelona of the seventies.

The scandal resurfaces almost a decade later when María discovers that others are involved: a politician with a dark past, a violent man and a hermit.

María will unwind the skein of blood and silences until reaching the assassination attempt of the Falangist Guillermo Mola in 1941, organized by his wife Isabel, which will seal a strange connection between these two brave women.

The sadness of the samurai It is, at the same time, a detective story full of unexpected twists and turns and a historical reflection to understand the present, with the mastery of Del Arbol to describe both the most brutal and the most intimate scenes.

Above the rain

It may seem that this book is a break with everything previously written by this author, and in terms of subject matter it certainly is, which is already a creative merit of someone who does not seek the easy and comfortable pigeonhole.

However, there is not so much break in the essentials. We meet souls who suffer and love, with their inner storms, their scars and their shortcomings. And there was a lot of that already in other previous books by this author that continues to grow and, given what has been seen, to reinvent itself.

Miguel and Helena are two old men on the verge of resignation. However, once they meet at the residence, they become each other's counterweight. And between their lost battles and their fears they find the courage to undertake new journeys together.

At the height of the impossible officers to whom we usually succumb, we also find in this magical story Yasmina, a migrant who seeks her identity amid the continuous and intensive obstacles of her closest relatives.

The three characters, both physically distant and close in the mental and emotional, will present different aspects of the force with which life situations must be approached. Will, love and hope as any engine to undertake any journey.

Other recommended books by Víctor del Árbol

no one on this earth

The Víctor del Árbol stamp takes on its own entity thanks to a narrative that crosses the noir genre to achieve greater relevance towards the most unexpected extremes. Because the tortured souls that inhabit the plots of this author bring us closer to life events as if devastated by circumstances.

Characters who have to travel the path of the most intricate destiny, with part of assuming their fate between regrets and small revenges, especially with oneself. Many of the protagonists of a bibliography made in Víctor del Árbol have a special fondness for this type of underworld, where everything bad happens, which always places them avoiding abysses when not falling entirely into them.

It's about the greatest possible suspense, the thriller surrounding the police investigation on duty. Because shadows attract shadows like a gigantic black hole, finally materialized from foci that no one on this earth, precisely, would want to approach.

Julián Leal is a police inspector in Barcelona who is not going through his best moment. The doctor has detected cancer and does not give him much time to live, he has also just been charged for beating up a child abuse suspect.

After a visit to his town in Galicia, some corpses begin to appear that may be related to him and his superior wants to blame him to take revenge for past grudges. He and his partner Virginia will be drawn into an investigation much deeper and more complicated than they could think and that could cost them and everyone they love their lives. Julián will not have to settle accounts only with his present, but also with his past.

while the world says no

That Víctor del Árbol had an I don't know what lyricism in his stage design, there is no doubt. Among the deeper approaches halfway between noir and the existential, the scenes of his novels always pierced and wounded. His characters convey the sorrow of the world making the emotional and even the spiritual, plot certainty. This is how a poetic vein is better understood that, in this case, leaves us all speechless.

Víctor del Árbol has always practiced poetic writing, without publicizing it, as a private emotion, and thanks to this, his first book of poems, we discover a clear and direct word to address both the small and the great themes of life (the love, childhood, loss...), feelings and emotions of all caliber, which occur over the years, through a sensitivity and depth that question and portray us. A true poetic find.