Joric selects the best books of 2024, with works by Catherine Lacey, Mónica Ojeda, Justin Torres, Dennis Lehane …
X Biography (Catherine Lacey)
He has headed many lists of the best of the year. And it is not surprising. The fourth novel by the American Catherine Lacey (all published in Spanish by Alfaguara) is one of those works that do not go unnoticed and immediately generate conversation. Either because of its thematic uniqueness: a story about the world of art and the complexities of love relationships framed in an alternative reality, the territory of the south, a fascist theocracy that separated from the rest of the United States after World War II. Or because of its narrative ambition: a very metaliterary mixture of fiction and reality, both of historical events and of twentie Police thriller. Like good works of art, ‘Biography of X’ works at various levels of reading. And in all just as good.
The call. A portrait (Leila Guerriero)
Tremendous this book. Tremendous what counts: the real story of the student and leftist activist Silvia Labayru, kidnapped with 19 years and locked in a clandestine detention center during the Argentine dictatorship. And tremendous how the journalist and writer Leila Guerriero tells it: “Kidnapped. Tortured Locked. Put to give birth on a table. Raped Forced to pretend. Finally released. And then, repudiated, rejected, suspicious. ” ‘The call’ (Anagrama) is the result of the exhaustive investigation carried out by Guerriero, together with the exceptional narrative talent of the author. It is not only an extraordinary journalistic exploration of some terrible facts of the past, but also, as the subtitle of the book, “a portrait”, a deeply human approach to a woman in the present, to a survivor of a few dark years that some follow committed to denying.
Sunday Flamenco (Olivier Schrauwen)
This graphic novel is incredible. The Belgian Flamenco Olivier Schrauwen (‘Parallel lives’, ‘Arsène Schrauwen’) has created a masterpiece about procrastination, gandula dispersion, guilty vaguería and narcissistic self -deception. Almost 500 pages dedicated to documenting, hour after hour, on a Sunday in the life of a typeface designer, a fictional version of a cousin of the author, with much to do and a few desire to do so. Schrauwen illustrates this “day lying in the trash” combining in an amazing way different narrative and graphic techniques. With the internal dialogue, the flow of consciousness, as a plot, ‘Domingo Flamenco’ expands through space and time to follow other characters related to the protagonist. The result is an sharp chronicle about daily tedium and existential discomfort that cannot be more exciting and fun to read.
I have some questions for you (Rebecca Makkai)
After the impact of the remarkable ‘The optimists’ (sixth floor), Rebecca Makkai has become one of the most promising voices of the current American literature. His new novel has only confirmed expectations. ‘I have some questions for you’ (sixth floor) is an extraordinary black novel, a story supported by a powerful intrigue that pulls the reader’s interest as the most addictive of Whodunit. But, in addition, Makkai is able to transcend the limits of gender and propose a much more complex narrative experience, which goes beyond the simple resolution of, otherwise, very entertaining mystery. On the one hand, the fact that the novel has two temporal lines (present and past, in an elite boarding Time, in this case the Pijo Student Environment of New Hampshire in the 90s. On the other, the one that the protagonist is a successful podcaster of True Crime gives rise to elaborate a series of interesting reflections on the obsession with that criminal genre, the rereading from the past with the Metoo glasses and the destructive power of social networks.
A coup de grace (Dennis Lehane)
Seven years ago Dennis Lehane did not publish a new novel. Immersed in his work as a television screenwriter (‘Mr. Mercedes’, ‘The visitor’, ‘locked up with the devil’), the author of ‘Mystic River’ and ‘Shutter Island’ returns with another notable thriller. ‘A coup of grace’ (Salamandra) is a story with autobiographical elements located in a working -class Boston neighborhood during the racial altercations that occurred in the process of graduating from the public schools of 1974. Lehane shows all his talent to create a Brutal and absorbent criminal history, recreate an era full of social tension without falling into presentism (the characters insult with the rawness with which it was done at that time and social context) and build some characters as memorable as the protagonist, Mary Pat Fennessy , a hardened woman for the determined life to everything to find her missing teenage daughter. Brutal.
Electric shamans at the Fiesta del Sol (Mónica Ojeda)
Flee from violence. That is the desire that pushes the two protagonist friends of ‘Electric shamans at the Fiesta del Sol’ (Random House) to attend solar noise, a macro -festival of electronic music that brings together thousands of young people for eight days to celebrate the Inti Raymi , the Fiesta del Sol, on the slope of Chimborazo, the highest volcano in Ecuador and the point closest to the world’s sun. Escape from the violence of Guayaquil, a city dominated by the Narcobandas, and disappear in a sound and lysergic landscape to the rhythm of its favorite band: electric shamans. From this plot premise, Mónica Ojeda proposes an amazing and hallucinated mental, emotional and musical journey (there is a playlist published by the author itself with songs of a stereo pump or Indiana Rita), full of psychedelia and lyricism, narrated by different voices ( ‘Noise and fury’ is one of Ojeda’s stylistic influences), which serves as an introspective search, celebration of life and act of surrender to the dionysian pleasure of dance, to be burned by that “fire” that li Saumet sang.
The zeal (Sabina Urraca)
Almost ten years have passed since that memorable article, ‘Nightmare in the Blablacar’, which so many joys (many we met her like this) and sorrows (Álvaro de Marichalar tried to get 30,000 euros for “moral damages”) provided the journalist Sabina Urraca. Then came its applauded debut, ‘The Girls Prodigio’, with whom it uncovered as a superlative writer. His third novel, ‘The zeal’ (Alfaguara), has meant the confirmation of his talent. With its usual raw language, full of bright and provocative metaphors (reminds of Ottesa Moshfegh), its tragicomic tone and an agile and fluid style, Urraca builds a story of additions and solitudes, starring a woman and a bitch (in heat), Through which he reflects on the traumas of abuse, fear and desire, animality and domestication, and the stories that tell us or tell ourselves to (on) live in a day of shit.
The Golden Girl (Pablo Maurette)
When is it known that a police novel is good? For me, when the drawing of the characters is up to the construction of the plot and atmosphere. How many ingenious plot premises, located in environments full of suggestions, have spoiled for flat and stereotyped characters. And, on the contrary, how many interesting characters remain in nothing because of a plot full of clichés, poorly developed and set. ‘The Golden Girl’ (Anagrama) fulfills these two conditions. On the one hand, it tells an exciting criminal history, full of stimulating reflections on police work, located in a gloomy Buenos Aires, in which witchcraft, albinism, genetic manipulation, male prostitution … and, on the other, it is starring some, it is starring some, it is starring some Fabulous characters (to highlight the protagonist, a judicial secretary about to go on vacation) whose relationships give rise to fantastic dialogues.
Blackouts (Justin Torres)
With ‘Pedro Páramo’ (1955) and ‘The kiss of the spider woman’ (1976) as main referents, ‘Blackouts’ is articulated through the night conversations that two characters have in the asylum room where one of them agonizes. From these dialogues, impregnated with irony, melancholy and sexual tension, the three stories, three intertwined stories that are composing a fascinating and ambitious mosaic, of great wealth and narrative beauty are built, where fiction is mixed with the essay, what narrative with the metatextual and the experimental with the classic. A trip to the dark, forgotten and “crossed out” origins of queer history (the author plays with the polysemy of the word “Blackout”) through the memories of two men and their beautiful friendship relationship.
The Scorpions (Sara Barquinero)
His youth (29 years) together with his literary ambition (800 pages full of scholarship, formal experimentation and variety of scenarios, genres and narrative resources) have turned the writer and philosopher Sara Barquine , of the current Spanish literary panorama. His novel has raised a stir and has generated a debate that was not seen since, I don’t know, Ana Iris Simon’s ‘fair’, even if his case was more for political issues than literary? In the end, the sensation that remains is to be before an irregular novel, which goes from more to less, but that has shone moments. All a literary, formal, structural and narratively literative experience, which extraordinarily addresses issues such as addictions, existential anguish, suicide or the construction of parallel and/or conspiracy realities as shelters to alleviate that vital emptiness, emotional lairs not end suicide.
