The 50 best books of 2022

It has been a gloomy year.

The green shoots of post-covid optimism froze in the early morning of February 24 when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Six months later, on August 12, Salman Rushdie suffered an assassination attempt in New York: he is still alive but has lost an eye and the mobility of a hand.

Four weeks later, on Sunday, September 11, Javier Marías, an emblem of recent Spanish literature, died.

Marías was so far the only author who had placed three of his books at the top of the

list .

It was in 2011 (

), 2014 (

) and 2017 (

).

That mark has just been equaled by Rafael Chirbes, who in 2013 triumphed with

, repeated last year with the first installment of his posthumous diaries (

) and does it again with the second volume.

As lucid as they are somber, masterfully written, these notebooks also set the tone for an annual selection in which the

and lucid Houellebecq, the stark family histories of Sara Mesa and Miguel Ángel Oeste, the portrait of precariousness and racism by Brenda Navarro or the love elegy of Luis García Montero.

The luminous part could be carried out by the metaliterary and picaresque humor of Enrique Vila-Matas, Luis Landero and, in their own way, Juan Tallón.

But these are not times for happy endings.

As Nicola Lagioia demonstrates with blood and fire, as soon as we delve into human miseries, we realize that we will never have the party in peace.

By

Rafael Chirbes. SCIAMMARELLA

Rafael ChirbesAnagram

By

Desolation is the norm of some rewritten, cut and edited diaries to clean them up as a book made and finished with a brief final

.

The intrigue is resolved (sorry) and the common thread of despair —a shapeless, disappointing and personalityless manuscript— ends up becoming something similar to a real book.

will be

, one of his best novels, as a gift from Kings in 2007, and written during the previous two years with the anguish of the ongoing decrepitude of a subject on the edge of survival, alone and devastated from within, attacked day and night due to diffuse malaise, anxieties with suicidal ideation, a feeling of increasing helplessness, radical insecurity in his ability to write and impotence in the face of the morbid routine of idle hours, the loss of glasses, muscle aches, physical discomfort and the feeling of exhaustion existential.

He is 57 years old.

In democracy, hardly anything worthy of being respected boils because of a heart wounded with rage and fury, but also because of insufficient airing

The curse and the mystery of the lists increase with the number one obtained by the edited transcription of some writer's notebooks, between the diary, the diary and the work material.

Chirbes died in 2015 struck down by lung cancer —a compulsive smoker— consecrated as the king of the alternative or radical or heterodox or incombustible left: the verbal and analytical stoning that he distributes, often in a very childish way, against the demonized Transition (his best sons died to leave the field open to opportunists and asslickers) are prolonged in unpleasant and disqualifying diagnoses of how much smacks of faltering social democracy from near or far: it no longer even aspires to moderate capitalism, mired in a massive and despicable cynicism.

From Zapatero to Santos Juliá, passing through Prisa,

EL PAÍS and the heartless intriguer of Javier Pradera, in the Spanish democracy hardly boils anything worthy of being respected by a heart wounded by rage and fury, but also by insufficient airing.

Not even Chirbes understands the reason for the obsession with living in lost towns and lonely houses, first in Extremadura and later in Valencia, when what he really likes is the crunchy and toxic rhythm of the cities, the promiscuity of sex and alcohol and partying, despite the encounters it fosters with ghosts of the past as deteriorated as oneself.

The book is an immersion in a punished, insecure and often exasperated intimacy

The addiction generated by the author's intimacy does not depend on the collusion or harmony that the reader detects with his compulsive and bitter opinions, but on the very fact of witnessing the stripping of the many phobias and apprehensions of a literary being who is also capable of enjoying reality with pen in hand, the physical pleasure of using it on paper and its narcotic whirr.

And then the dimension of Chirbes opens up, parking the curmudgeon to give way to presumable drafts of articles or micro-essays on cities or books.

The fascination that runs through this second installment of the diaries - in addition to the finally completed writing of

- is a meticulous and surrendered reading of

, by Fernando de Rojas, as an absolute and bleak masterpiece, while devouring literature at all hours, like a good insomniac, with no temporal or geographical limit:

, by Jonathan Littell, seems one thing and then is another (worse);

Muñoz Molina captures

the sordidness of the past in an almost tangible way, while Chirbes is stunned to discover

, from Chaves Nogales.

The cultured guide subsection for visiting cities might have worked better as an appendix because the pace of reading a newspaper does not combine with the descriptive and analytical slowness of the cities you visit, be it New York or Berlin, and you are almost impatient to find those evocations there. graphomaniac tourist.

They are almost always wonderful, but they interrupt the vertigo of immersion in a punished, insecure and often exasperated intimacy.

• Text by Sara Mesa about the diaries of Rafael Chirbes

• Review of 'Diaries.

  A lost time 3 and 4. By Anna Caballé

• Review of 'Diaries.

  A lost time 1 and 2. By Anna Caballé

• Publisher book link

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Sara Mesa familyAnagram

There is an addictive ritual with each novel by Sara Mesa: you take a breath when you read the first sentence and don't let it go until the last one.

Captivating, disturbing and suffocating, in her account of the control mechanisms that operate through the traditional family, Mesa displays her obsessions in the best version of her.

Like that uncritical magnifying glass on the double lives of those who suffer below the visible;

her compassionate, raw humor on her characters (Gambi, forever in our hearts) and her unique ability to reveal the dark slime underlying every line of dialogue.

A clairvoyant novel that encapsulates what we are in one of her sentences: “How much that man suffered, what shadows he hid, and all for what.

No way".

By

• Interview with Sara Mesa.

  By Laura Fernandez

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Juan Tallón Anagram

If an author went to his publisher with the argument of this novel, it is likely that he would return home empty-handed.

In 2006 it was learned that the Reina Sofía had lost a 38-ton sculpture by Richard Serra.

No one knew how, or when, or at whose hands.

With this premise, the Galician author builds through 70 testimonies a fresco of Spanish society, the chronicle of an investigation, a catwalk of egos, a story that transcends genres, an impossible novel.

And he does it with a tone that maintains the distance between caricature and tragedy.

Tallon walks the edge and maintains his balance to build a novel that at the same time is not, an impeccable narrative.

By

• Criticism of Carlos Pardo

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Luis LanderoTusquets

Who hasn't experienced that of feeling like a wuss, of believing that they aren't up to the task?

Marcial, the plant manager of a slaughterhouse, has no higher education, but he does possess a flowery vocabulary and heterogeneous knowledge that, he says, places him at the level of a writer, a philosopher with singular background.

And who has not experienced that an insignificant detail in the eyes of others grows into a world in their own head, that a daily gesture is transmuted into a perhaps irreconcilable quarrel?

Marcial's adventures are shared, although, well thought out, perhaps not so much.

To him, love, a love of those who no longer remain, has him, oh, obsessed.

With this huge character in his smallness, tragic in his comedy, Luis Landero (Alburquerque, 74 years old) embroiders a novel about his life and trifles,

that sometimes turn wild deeds.

By

• Criticism of Domingo Ródenas de Moya

• Interview with Luis Landero.

  By Luz Sánchez-Mellado

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Nicola LagioiaTranslated by Francisco Javier González RoviraRandom House Literature

Nicola Lagioia's chronicle of a murder for no apparent reason that horrified Italy a few years ago is a fast-paced investigation into the death, in March 2016, of a hustler from the Roman periphery at the hands of two young men from a good family after an orgy of drugs and alcohol.

Lagioia, an outstanding student of Capote and Carrère, grabs the reader in the first line and doesn't let go until the end.

But the book is more than the account of a real event.

It is the portrait, dark as a Caravaggio, of the moral corruption of a city, of what is hidden behind its magnificent ruins.

Rome in all its splendor and hideous decadence.

By

• Article by Juan Carlos Galindo

• Interview with Nicola Lagioia.

  By Daniel Verdu

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Brenda Navarro Sixth Floor

The Mexican Brenda Navarro was asked in Spain if she was her daughter's babysitter.

The racist bias is not exclusive to the country where she has lived for years, but she is very present.

The writer rightly reflects this in

, her second and stupendous novel, which moves away from the manifesto of denunciation and good intentions to show us the bitchy life, with flashes of solidarity and humor, carried by people who stop caring for their own to earn a pittance thousands of miles caring for strangers.

The protagonist considers what life is worth living with a powerful, vibrant first-person voice that captivates the reader.

It is not autofiction, it is good literature with a lot of sociology.

By

• Criticism of Carlos Pardo

• Interview with Brenda Navarro.

  By Almudena Barragan

• Publisher book link

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Luis García Montero Tusquets

Since its origins, poetry —that acid distillation of language— has been subjected to the tension between living up to great moments and the imperative to temper feelings so as not to confuse art with relief.

Haunted by the terminal illness of his partner, Almudena Grandes, Luis García Montero decided to subject his profession to the greatest test and measure it with the most terrible of scales: death.

The result is 25 poems written in line with the events, a great book whose last word is "life" and in which, despite everything, "finals" rhymes with "happy" and "being sunk" with "being in love".

Because that's what it's all about, a collection of love poems that manages to find wonder in the greatest grayness: whether it's a restless plane trip, New Year's Eve in a hospital or a forever empty house.

By

• Criticism by Luis Bagué Quílez

• Interview with Luis García Montero.

  By Jesus Ruiz Mantilla

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Enrique Vila-Matas Seix Barral

The return of Enrique Vila-Matas with

is game, mirage, humor and literature.

Permeable and fluid, borderline, in this kind of biography of a style, he writes about the work of many others, agile references that function as rapid changing reflexes that pass as if the reader were riding in a passenger carriage traveling through that world.

This shows the effect of readings, phrases and meetings that ignite the imagination and ideas of the narrator that this time the author of

has invented .

The circuit of thoughts, sincere jokes and games that Vila-Matas builds in the book has something of a toy electric train, of small wooden blocks with which he elevates a story as his own as no other.

By

• Interview with Enrique Vila-Matas.

  By Noelia Ramirez

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Michel HouellebecqAnagram

Without being Michel Houellebecq's best book, his level of challenge to the dominant culture and political correctness is such that

also shines at the top of the best of the year.

The author has chosen here a typical man from the elite of Paris, a cold and dispassionate technocrat who has been moving away from love, sex and life until it begins to reposition him in the face of human events.

Humans, yes, far from the Teflon to which he has become accustomed.

And it is in this arc of the character towards the reconnection with the common and vital problems where Houellebecq engages in his best game of surprises.

Wrong, exasperating and brilliant reading about what distances us from the world.

And what unites us.

By

• Criticism by Javier Aparicio Maydeu

• Article by Marc Bassets

• Publisher book link

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Miguel Ángel OesteTusquets

Miguel Ángel Oeste has killed the father.

To the man who insulted, humiliated, harassed and attacked him during that eternity that goes from childhood to youth.

He kills him with this novel, which goes back and forth from containment to spasm, in order to live the chains he drags with a little more lightness.

"I was bitten by a mad dog and I will never be able to get rid of that damage."

Trauma as a writer's factory.

Writing as a trauma reagent.

Parallel to the memorial narration run the story about the creative process —13 years of changes, doubts and investigations— and the public examination of the author's great fear: the transmission of the inheritance received to his daughters.

A must for lovers of self literature.

By

• Criticism of Domingo Ródenas de Moya

• Article by Berna González Harbor

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Cormac McCarthyTranslation by Luis Murillo FortRandom House Literature

Great literature, science and delirium come together in this double novel in which Cormac McCarthy (Providence, United States, 89 years old) returns to narrative 16 years after publishing

.

The father and son of that masterpiece are taken over by two brothers marked by incest and suicide.

His creator once again shows that he is, above all, a great creator of characters.

And without concessions.

• Criticism of Eduardo Lago

• Article by Iker Seisdedos

• Publisher book link

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Esperanza López ParadaPre-Texts

"This is the mystery / I go through the world so inhabited / that I barely hold on."

With these three verses closes the intense book of mourning that Esperanza López Parada (Madrid, 60 years old) dedicates to her mother and her partner, who died a year apart.

"God was like my uncle / the seminarian" is read in two other verses that complete the tone of a set in which the sacred coexists with profane everyday life and eternity with the irremediable passage of time.

• Criticism of Antonio Ortega

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Sergio del MolinoAlfaguara

Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the PSOE's first electoral victory, the author of

(Madrid, 43 years old) portrays Felipe González from the anti-Franco clandestinity until his departure from the Government in 1996, harassed by corruption.

The result is both a praise (not without fascination) of the charisma and progressive reformism of the socialist leader and of the (sometimes reviled, sometimes sacralized) Transition.

• Criticism of Jordi Amat

• Extract from 'A certain González'

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Rosa MonteroSeix Barral

Rosa Montero (Madrid, 71 years old) delves into one of the great issues of today —mental health— and mixes memory and essay to analyze the relationship between disorder and creativity.

She does it by diving into her own life and those of authors such as Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf or Sylvia Plath.

• Profile of Berna González Harbor

• Excerpt from 'The danger of being sane'

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Cristina Araújo GamirTusquets

"Look at that girl, the one sitting on the bench, she must be wearing a brutal fart, but don't stop, damn it, hide it."

So says one of the many voices of the disturbing first novel with which her author (Madrid, 40 years old) won the Tusquets Award this year.

Unsettling because it narrates the consequences of a gang rape, but also because, without Manichaeism or equidistance, it makes the reader (and the reader) recognize something of himself in all the characters.

• Criticism of Jordi Gracia

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Juan Gómez BárcenaSeix Barral

Toñanes is a place that is both real and imaginary through which Juan Gómez Bárcena (Santander, 38 years old) takes readers, making them travel back in time to attend 200 years of history of his town, in Cantabria.

Using a masterful almost cinematographic editing, we witness the trajectory of several couples whose lives are separated by decades although their destiny always seems the same.

• Criticism of Domingo Ródenas de Moya

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Ada SalasPre-Texts

The archeology of this book by Ada Salas (Cáceres, 57 years old) is both literal and symbolic: that of a site and that of life.

In the first, "everyone speaks and everyone / remains silent", that is, they are resurrected when the poem breathes its spirit into them.

In the second, the poet's childhood (her mother, her father) closes the circle of intimacy as mythical as the Trojan War.

Indestructible.

• Criticism by Luis Bagué Quílez

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Lucía LijtmaerAnagram

The parallel monologue of two women has served Lucía Lijtmaer (Buenos Aires, 45 years old) for three things: that people learn to spell their last name, distinguish cautery from captivity and surrender en masse to one of the revelation novels of the year .

In it, God and an ex-boyfriend become the object of anger and adoration of the protagonists of a story full of rhythm, intelligence, horror and humor.

• Criticism of Carlos Zanon

• Interview with Lucia Lijtmaer.

  By Noelia Ramirez

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Josep M. FraderaAnagrama

Before anti-imperialism, a kind of imperialism with a human face was attempted.

That is, broadly speaking, one of the theses of the book with which Josep Maria Fradera (Mataró, 70 years old) won the Anagrama Essay Prize.

The Catalan historian traces, between 1780 and 1918, a "humanitarian tradition" born from the French Revolution that ended slavery, but, in the end, failed to get morality to put doors to greed.

And then came the real anti-imperialism.

• Article by Jacinto Anton

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Rosa BerbelTusquets

Sometimes the end of the world coincides with the end of youth.

After revealing herself as one of the great voices of new poetry with

, Rosa Berbel (Estepa, 25 years old) confirms herself with this collection of poems about the planetary and generational apocalypse.

• Criticism by Luis Bagué Quílez

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Javier Cercas Tusquets

• Criticism of Domingo Ródenas de Moya

• Interview with Javier Cercas.

  By Javier Rodriguez Marcos

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Pablo Katchadjian Sixth Floor

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Isaac Bashevis Singer

• Criticism of José María Guelbenzu

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Nuria Barrios Foam Pages

• Criticism of Silvia Hernando

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Pilar AdonGalaxia Gutenberg

• Criticism of Carlos Pardo

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J. M. Coetzee Translation Mariana Dimópulos The Thread of Ariadne

• Interview with JM Coetzee.

  By Berna González Harbor

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Gabriele TergitTranslation by Carlos ForteaAsteroid Books

• Criticism of Cecilia Dreymüller

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María StepánovaTranslation by Jorge FerrerAcantilado

• Criticism of Marta Sanz

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Serhii Plokhy Translation by Marta Rebón Peninsula

• Interview with Serhii Plokhy.

  By Luis Doncel

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Sergio RamírezAlfaguara

• Criticism of Domingo Ródenas de Moya

• Interview with Sergio Ramírez.

  By Francesco Manetto

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Andrea Wulf

• Interview with Andrea Wulf.

  By Carmen Perez-Lanzac

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Amia Srinivasan

• Interview with Amia Srinivasan.

  By Rafael de Miguel

• Link to the book in the bookstore

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Leonardo Padura Tusquets

• Criticism of Juan Carlos Galindo

• Interview with Leonardo Padura.

  By Berna González Harbor

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Mircea CărtărescuTranslation by Marian Ochoa de EribeImpedimenta

Mircea Cartarescu

• Article by Constance Lambertucci

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Paco Cerdà Asteroid Books

• Article by Manuel Morales

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Patricia Highsmith

• Article by Iker Seisdedos

• Extracts from the diaries of Patricia Highsmith

• Publisher book link

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Norman ManeaTranslation by Marian Ochoa de EribeGalaxia Gutenberg

• Criticism of Alberto Manguel

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Paul B. PreciadoAnagram

• Extract from 'Dysphoria mundi'

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Damon GalgutTranslation by Celia FilipettoLibros del Asteroid

• Criticism by Javier Aparicio Maydeu

• Interview with Damon Galgut.

  By Andrea Aguilar

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Kate ZambrenoTranslated by Carlos Bueno Vera and Violeta GilLa Una Rota

• Article by Noelia Ramírez

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Enrique KrauzeTusquets

• Interview with Enrique Krauze.

  By Constanza Lambertucci and Francesco Manetto

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Delphine HorvilleurTranslation by Regina López MuñozAsteroid Books

• Interview with Delphine Horvilleur.

  By Alex Vicente

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Almudena Grandes Tusquets

• Criticism of Domingo Ródenas de Moya

• Article by Andrea Aguilar

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Mauro Libertella Sixth Floor

• Criticism of Carlos Pardo

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Aixa de la CruzAlfaguara

• Interview with Aixa de la Cruz.

  By Alex Vicente

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Keum Suk Gendry-Kim Herb

• Article by Tommaso Koch

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Elizabeth Strout

• Letters between Elena Ferrante and Elizabeth Strout

• Publisher book link

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Rutu Modan Tunnels

• Article by Tommaso Koch

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Andrés Trapiello Destination

• Criticism of Jordi Amat

• Column of Felix de Azúa

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Marco Martella

• Article by Anatxu Zabalbeascoa

• Publisher book link

WERE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

2021.

.

Rafael Chirbes.

Anagram.

See here the 2021 special

2020.

Sarah Table.

Anagram.

See here the 2020 special

2019. Lluvia fina. Luis Landero. Tusquets.
Vea aquí el especial de 2019

2018. Ordesa. Manuel Vilas. Alfaguara.
Vea aquí el especial de 2018

2017. Berta Isla. Javier Marías. Alfaguara.
Vea aquí el especial de 2017

2016. Manual para mujeres de la limpieza. Lucia Berlin. Alfaguara.
Vea aquí el especial de 2016

2015. Los diarios de Emilio Renzi. Años de formación. Ricardo Piglia. Anagrama.
Vea aquí el especial de 2015

2014. Así empieza lo malo. Javier Marías. Alfaguara.
Vea aquí el especial de 2014

2013. En la orilla. Rafael Chirbes. Anagrama.
Vea aquí el especial de 2013

2012. Pensar el siglo XX. Tony Judt. Taurus.
Vea aquí el especial de 2012

2011. Los enamoramientos. Javier Marías. Alfaguara.
Vea aquí el especial de 2011

2010. Verano. J. M. Coetzee. Literatura Random House.

2009. Anatomía de un instante.Javier Cercas. Literatura Random House.

2008. Chesil Beach. Ian McEwan. Anagrama.

2007. Vida y destino. Vasili Grossman. Galaxia Gutenberg.

SEIS VISIONES DESDE AMÉRICA LATINA

Juan Gabriel Vásquez

El aire que me falta, de Luiz Schwarcz. Literatura Random House

El aire que me falta comienza en lo alto de una montaña: Luiz Schwarcz, editor de prestigio, padre de familia satisfecho y abuelo feliz, encuentra de repente que no puede respirar. La depresión lo ha acompañado durante buena parte de la vida, pero esta vez se pone en la difícil tarea de explicarla: de construir, nos dice, una narrativa. Y lo que se le presenta primero es una memoria de infancia: el ruido de las piernas de su padre golpeando contra el marco de la cama en largas noches de insomnio. Cuando su madre trata de explicarle la causa de esas ansiedades —y de las demás cosas: los bruscos cambios de ánimo, los silencios densos, los arrebatos de violencia verbal—, habla de culpa. Es la culpa del sobreviviente.

Así se entera el niño Luiz del día en que su padre y su abuelo, judíos de origen húngaro, avanzaban hacia el campo de concentración de Bergen-Belsen cuando el tren se detuvo, y el abuelo le dio a su hijo un empujón y una orden: “Huye, hijo mío, huye”. El hijo obedece; se salva, crece, huye a Brasil en 1947 y construye una vida nueva, pero nunca logra liberarse de la culpa de haber dejado atrás a su padre. Y Luiz Schwarcz, mientras indaga en el pasado de su familia de emigrados, reconstruye también su propia vida: el examen de su depresión y todo lo que la acompaña —la propia sensación de culpa, la impresión de ser responsable de los otros— es también el examen de la huella que ese pasado ha dejado en él. 

El aire que me falta es una meditación sobre una enfermedad, pero también sobre la manera en que heredamos el pasado de los otros. Es un libro descarnado y valiente, de una lucidez deslumbrante y una rara clarividencia.

Búscalo en tu librería

Karina Pacheco

La estación del pantano, de Yuri Herrera. Periférica

En su autobiografía, nada dejó escrito Benito Juárez sobre los dieciocho meses de su exilio en Nueva Orleans, salvo la fecha de su arribo: 29 de diciembre de 1853. La estación del pantano es bastante más que una exquisita ficción histórica sobre aquel periodo. Con el lenguaje radical y envolvente que caracteriza su obra, párrafo tras párrafo, Yuri Herrera nos sumerge en escenas, diálogos y miradas que se hacen universales: deslumbran, interpelan, provocan continuas relecturas. Juárez emerge como un arquetipo de quien ha sido traspasado a otro mundo, a una Babel que en momentos puede interpretar a través de sus experiencias; las más de las veces es atravesado por el desconcierto, el hedor, el deseo y también el espanto que observa en ese Gran Pantano, en un tiempo donde el mundo entero estaba en construcción, violenta. No sobra ni una palabra; sin embargo, esa precisión permite atisbar el vuelo de las libélulas, los suelos ablandados por la basura, el horror de los mercados de esclavos, las trompetas como mar de fondo a un mundo fragmentado por las múltiples pigmentaciones de la piel y los idiomas. En este universo, los conspiradores exiliados de la vida real son solamente algunos puntales para elevar a personajes y escenas inolvidables: Thisbee, Polaris, el calor convertido en la calor, en una lectura semejante al ingreso al mejor teatro del mundo.

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Emiliano Monge

Yo maté un perro en Rumanía, de Claudia Ulloa-Donoso. Almadía

Elegir un libro es complicado, a menos que uno se lo tome así: como decirle a un amigo o a una amiga que se lea tal o cual novela, porque está realmente buenísima. Por ejemplo, Yo maté a un perro en Rumanía, de Claudia Ulloa-Donoso, una escritora capaz de ocultar al tiempo que muestra y de hacer que el lenguaje sea una máquina de impresión, pero también de desvanecimiento. Yo maté a un perro en Rumania, que empieza siendo narrada por el espíritu o el fantasma de un perro —un perro que asevera que, en el más allá, los humanos pierden el lenguaje, al tiempo que el resto de animales lo adquieren—, para ser después narrada por una protagonista que va perdiendo el habla de a poco y, durante un breve instante, por su acompañante, que no entiende nada o casi nada y que es entonces una especie de silencio, da cuenta del viaje, a veces luminoso y cálido, a veces oscuro y helado, de una mujer que vive en Noruega, que está al borde del quiebre emocional y físico, que se deja arrastrar por un amigo hasta Rumania y Moldavia, pero también al mundo de los muertos —no es casual que ese amigo se llame Ovidio y que los fallecidos celebren bacanales tumultuosas—, mientras asistimos a la fragilidad y a la enorme resistencia de los hilos que unen nuestro mundo interior con el Mundo. “Sé lo que pasó aquí, pero qué pasó aquí”, este es el sentimiento y estas son las palabras que asaltan al lector tras leer a Ulloa-Donoso. Y esto es, precisamente, lo que genera la gran literatura, la sensación de que hemos sido trasplantados o de que el mundo en torno nuestro ha sido trasplantado.

Búscalo en tu librería

Alejandra Costamagna

Una música, de Hernán Ronsino. Eterna Cadencia

En el comienzo el padre muere y el hijo está de gira en otro continente, y debe subir al escenario a tocar el piano. Esa es la nota de partida. Lo que sigue es la sensación de un ramaje que se expande y al mismo tiempo concentra microuniversos que nos hacen entrar en la historia de a pedacitos pero decididamente. Una novela laberinto, como un piano. Un libro habitado por el vuelo de unos pájaros que resuenan como un coro griego. Una música intervenida todo el tiempo, como saliéndose de campo. Un trabajo con los retazos, con los fulgores de aquello que tuvo esplendor y hoy se tuerce. Incluida la deriva vital del protagonista. Un camino hacia atrás, que es acaso un intento por desmarcarse de una genealogía. Y, sin embargo, en ese trayecto van apareciendo otros chispazos que traen de vuelta las paternidades y sus vacíos y sus sombras. Me maravilla el pulso de Una música, el galope: su “pasión organizada”.

Mónica Ojeda

Fiebre de carnaval, de Yuliana Ortiz Ruano. La Navaja Suiza

Esta novela tiene un ritmo que goza y baila encima de la violencia, por eso la sobrevive. Yuliana escribe la fiesta y todo lo que en ella hay de arrebatamiento, peligro y refugio. Brillante.

Búscalo en tu librería

Antonio Ortuño

Lengua dormida, de Franco Félix. Sexto Piso

La literatura contemporánea en español está que rezuma de maternidades. Propias, ajenas, disidentes, tradicionales, a fuerzas. Maternidades que destrozan, que se padecen, que se gozan, y que, sea como sea, siempre marcan. El escritor mexicano Franco Félix (Hermosillo, Sonora, 1981) ha puesto sobre la mesa su propia versión de cómo enfrentar este reto literario, al abordar la vida y muerte de su madre en Lengua dormida. 

El narrador de la novela es el mismo autor, en un ejercicio, sin embargo, que excede los límites más bien estrechos de la autoficción en boga. Y transita por algunas de las diversas formas de registrar literariamente una pérdida mayor, como la de una madre: por un lado, la exploración del sufrimiento personal y el simultáneo registro del humor negrísimo que acompaña al doliente; por otro, la transmutación del narrador-personaje en una suerte de detective, que se empeña en indagar en los elocuentes velos tras de los que Ana María, su madre, enmascaró su vida: su hermético lenguaje personal, por ejemplo, o la historia de la espectral familia a la que abandonó antes de emparejarse con el padre de Félix. 

Una tercera veta de Lengua dormida es la tranquila mano con que el narrador filtra en su discurso un aire divagatorio, repleto de imágenes delirantes, de confesiones tan jocosas como grotescas y tan desconcertantes como sinceras. Así, en la novela no hay espacio solamente para el dolor y la memoria, sino también para los canguros y Freddy Krueger, para cabezas que flotan en un patio doméstico y viejitos que se relamen ante la belleza de los cadáveres… 

A pesar de su sólida historia y el riesgo y, a la vez, el rigor formal de su escritura, nadie puede prever qué sucederá en la siguiente página de Lengua dormida. Ese es su gran triunfo. 

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