Under the surface of things
(Eduardo Halfon, The pirouette, Valencia, Pre-Textos, 2010.)
There are novels that pull the reader eager to start writing novels, they get that one, even though lack of imagination or narrative perspective, "I feel like trying, and that it looks easy. The latter, far from being a defect, is one of the great achievements of the best recent narrative, if that does not imply shallowness, apathy and impatience to end as soon as possible and in any way. Perfectly clear that regardless of current fashion detestable microstories (which is often the favorite genre of people who do not like reading), and the limited scope of some nouvelles perhaps but not bad inane (and I think most particularly some coming from France), a new, short novel that is not simplicity but by the will of suggestion, insinuation, to leverage the best lessons of the story and even the poem. They are storytellers who rely on the intelligence of its readers and therefore do not care that they work a little, on the contrary, they are looking for a place in the narrative and what is outside it, and pretend that they are not passive bystanders and lazy attending inconsequential anecdotes and secrets of a complacent narrator (especially himself).
In this sense, the Guatemalan Eduardo Halfon given to The pirouette a real leap to the list of narrators worthy of being taken into account. If you already have his penultimate book, Polish boxer, gave a lecture on how far a story (especially with the magnificent "Twain"), this novel (that part, of course, one of the stories this book) gets and gives a reading text easy and even seemingly slight, but in which there is no easy access to its ultimate meaning. The author lets loose all the threads you want to be unresolved, and those are the end, almost all, or at least almost all that seemed relevant, those that justified and supported the story. After many hints that sometimes act as truisms, almost nothing is closed, explain a few things ... but that also achieves Halfon not matter too much and reading more enjoyable and does not end after the final point, something that readers appreciate most demanding and active.
In turn, other readers may be disappointed by the ending, but in my opinion is a disturbing "Journey to the End of the Night" which is related either to the best of the latter narrative, so you have an epiphany disturbing, mystery out of focus, leaving the reader with the obligation to think, to complete, maybe go back ... and also leave with an appetite for more, positively dissatisfied. It is, moreover, an honest outcome, in which the author through a strange ad inferos descensus, stop looking at that person you never know exactly what it seeks and gets carried away by a confusing situation, unexpected, perhaps dangerous, but exhilarating, dreamlike, in line with the obsessions that have confessed to some of the early stages of the novel. And, incidentally, a closing in which literally explores the depths, underlying, something that perhaps the author also intends to launch a warning about the intentions of what you are typing, moving away from the flat and the anecdotal.
Apart from being a novel about the search, and obsession, and the music, and gypsies, and on Belgrade after the war, and on the return to origins (but common origins, primary, not individuals )..., The stunt is also an urban odyssey in a strange city and rather hostile (with some brief "I do not know if bucolic break ironically) led by the bodies that are bound, for the money, for the snuff, and alcohol ... but not by violence, which appears only in very oblique or better implied (those neo-Nazis at the end or intimidating those customs officers Serbia ...). And yet, is anything but a sample that is being called "dirty novel." Rather, it is peaceful when you want be and the presence of music, very free and liberating, it helps give the book of soul, vital pulp, tissue.
Finally, on the other hand, someone understands that take advantage of the discovery and conquest narratives of Roberto Bolaño necessarily involves not try to imitate them (another excellent example of this would Buzz 2010, the first novel by Colombian Juan Sebastian Cardenas) and although at times strained claims that could have some capricious or ill-considered ("It seems impossible, although unlikely, can you not love someone named Leah and also returns from a trip to the shaved pubis tersely," is above, as the first example, page 21), the overall tone is very high, continually worthy of applause. Perhaps this narrator only fails a bit, oddly enough, when you try to "be a poet", but also manages to achieve dazzling intuitions in this regard. But above all unsurpassed expert in telling what happens when there is absolutely nothing happens when only a walk, see, eat and smoke (see, for example, the magnificent pages 107-111).
The third part is a veritable feast of twenty-eight pages, and contains the highest moments and inspired the whole. It gives true extent lyrical, helps us to place ourselves in the temporal development of events, transporting playfully from here to there, much better served to outline the three main characters (the narrator, "Eduardo," Leah and the elusive pianist uprooted and Milan) and represents a strategic break between the approach of the novel and its hypnotic proposed outcome.
is, finally, a novel very much alive, very free, very unleashed, vibrant despite the moderate apathy protagonist-narrator. The story, without knowing quite how or why, it traps from the outset and never lets go until the last paragraph, curiously when the protagonist is also strangely trapped ... Perhaps
any future accounts of Eduardo Halfon recover any The pirouette matters left pending, but it is feared that, even so, this new work will turn several other roads, but not to mislead or confuse the reader, but to express the voluptuous sure that you can write a good novel about anything if one has the right spirit, enough curiosity and observation skills required. In a world so large and unruly as the narrative of our time, which Eduardo Halfon and his character focus, however small, everyday it is, has, almost by definition, infinite and changing meanings. The interest, attention and desire to enjoy both narrator and protagonist is immersed in the novel and what This will involve finding not just a lesson in literature, but more important, and reveal an enviable attitude to the ever-present confusion.
(published in Cuadernos Hispanic, No. 725 (November 2o10), pp. 147-150.
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