Languages ​​that awaken the reader

Following in the wake of our latest installments, dear reader, in this one that you barely receive I want to talk to you about Franco Félix, a very unique and ubiquitous Mexican writer, whose latest book,

has just been published a couple of months ago and will be mean, I am convinced, the ultimate confirmation of his talent, a talent that is rooted in excess, apparent chaos, contrasts and risk, both in form and substance.

Born in the north of Mexico, in the oven city that is Hermosillo, Félix's previous books, among which I like to highlight

—a short novel in which a desert wants to swallow everything, the protagonists fight with the narrators and the author demonstrates an unprecedented mastery for the dialogues and the multiplicity of voices and silences— and

delirious novel of total ambition in which Félix plays with language and time at will and in which the descendants of the old man genius, who after several generations of inbreeding would seem to be biologically self-destructing, must face God, who has come to earth disguised as an extraterrestrial—announced that its author would write, sooner or later, a formidable book.

a wonderful book

Before telling, here, what

dear reader, I want to talk about its form, because it is, in the first instance, in its name —Félix, who understands that a book, to be unique, must be a universe in itself, but also a game and a challenge for the reader, shows, incidentally, that there is no such thing as difficult literature but, in any case, demanding literature, in the sense that it asks the reader to spend more time than ask the common of current books -, that Félix's novel, which is also biography, diary and notebook, becomes a formidable book:

It is the story of the search for the story itself, as well as the gestation of a singular language that crosses the common language and a window to a space in which time, like train tracks, crosses the plain on rails that go and others that come;

On the pages of Félix's book, time advances forward, but also backwards, since the life of the protagonist, who is the author's mother, is actually two lives: the one she once had, in the City of Mexico, and the one he had, again, in Hermosillo.

Now,

is also a formidable book because of what it tells, not just because of how it tells it: based on an accident that would seem inconsequential —a woman, Ana María, falls in the kitchen of her house—, the protagonist of the novel enters into a spiral of hospital visits that, years later, ends with her bedridden and in a coma.

Her son, then, from anguish, pain, memory, doubt and literature, will have to tell us, with outrageous humor —another of the virtues of

is that it brings us to the brink of tears with the ease with which it makes us laugh—, the life of that woman who was the pillar of her family, her neighborhood and the party in Hermosillo and that of that other woman, herself, who abandoned another family, another colony and other parties, years ago.

In the nest and with humor

As in any formidable novel, the story that constitutes the main river of Sleeping Language is full of tributaries or, to put it another way —a way that, visually, does honor to Félix's book—, the showcase that is this work holds countless unique pieces: pop figures and action figures, reels from horror movies and characters who escaped from those, cuckoos with multiple voices and philosophers, also with multiple voices, prodigious drunkenness, ghostly presences bordering on schizophrenia and a little dog that must have been the start of a big business, but she is raped while being walked by the narrator's father, who is unaware of the abuse because diabetes has left him blind.

In

the humor is also formidable, but better an example, to end by inviting you to this book or any of Félix, the ones I mentioned or these others:

or

(by the way, when you finish reading the following fragment, you will wonder, of course, what will have happened, will they have put the garlic in it or not, well, you will find the answer in

“My parents were desperately looking for a solution against fear.

They tried everything, they took me with massagers, with priests, with doctors, nothing worked.

It even occurred to an hourglass that they could cure me by putting garlic up my ass.

-I eat?

In the…” My mother was incredulous.

—Yes, in the ass.

But sadly no one believes in these things,” said Doña Marta.

—I don't know, what if he becomes a whore?

my dad intervened.

"It is a risk that must be taken," the hourglass closed.

coordinates

Sleepy tongue

was published by Sexto Piso.

is found in the edition of Trojan Horse and

from Inland.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber