Like a specter. Miao Dao

Idioma original: English

Original title: Phantomwise: 1972 / Miao Dao

Year of publication:2020

Translation: Susana de la Higuera Glynne-Jones

Valuation: advisable

Like every year (well, except one), that moment is approaching when the injured and gafapasas of the world, even though we deny it, are waiting for a boring-looking Swedish man to come out of a door and reveal to us who the winner is. /a with the Nobel Prize in Literature. Like every year, the British bookmakers publish beforehand how the bets are going to get the lucky one and, like every year, there are always unwary people who put their money and hopes on the bad Murakami or Houellebecq, to ​​the delight, I suppose, of the runners, who know whatand it’s going to go straight into your pockets… Now, you don’t have to spend a euro or a pound to have a good time with this annual tradition. We can all make our predictions or at least comment on who our favorites are, ignoring the usual fact that they will give it to some writer we haven’t heard of and who won’t even have a review in Un Libro Al Día, for example. It’s impossible for this to seem…

Well, honoring this little tradition, I am also going to allow myself to make my prediction; taking into account that, according to what has been established in recent years, this has to be given to a woman and that last year it was for a Norwegian author, then they can give it again to someone who writes in English, my bet (with permission from the favorite , the Chinese Can Xue) goes to Joyce Carol Oates, who, in addition to her literary excellence, is a writer with a very extensive body of work and who, although she maintains an enviable intellectual and public capacity (just yesterday she was touring… Sweden, he specifies and I don’t know if coincidentally) already has quite a few years, at the limit of what is admissible for the Swedish Academy, since it is already known that from a certain age onwards they look the other way, lest the winner does not make it to the ceremony award ceremony, as colorful as it is…

Anyway, just in case and so that the bull doesn’t get me caught, in case she is awarded the prize, I have decided to review some more books by this writer. Now, given that her extensive literary production abounds in billets (I don’t know where this woman has found the time) and the life of a servant is not suitable for that right now, I have decided on a not very extensive volume, which includes two short novels – or long stories, if you prefer – but, it seems to me, quite representative of the usual style and themes of Oates’ work (in any case, and whether he gets the Nobel Prize or not, his books without a doubt deserve the sorry, I promise to read a longer one in the near future and review it, of course). In the first of the novelettes, like a spectrumwe are told the troubles of Alyce Urquhart, a nineteen-year-old university student trapped between the nets – or the pincers – of the desire of two of her professors, two men very different from each other, but men, after all, and therefore all the more inclined to think of their own convenience than of respecting the will of a young girl.

In the second story, Miao Daoa twelve-year-old girl, Mia, faces her parents’ divorce, difficult puberty and school/sexual bullying by taking refuge with a colony of stray cats, a way to alleviate her loneliness and hold on to her childhood…

(I’m not going to say more because, as I say, both are quite short novels…)

Perhaps these novels are not the best of Joyce Carol Oates’ work, but they are, it seems to me, a good way to get into it, both for its narrative excellence and because it touches on common themes of this author: violence against women. -and violence in general… In fact, Oates has an essay about why she writes about violence-, the complex ambiguity of human feelings, the feeling of helplessness that can, and perhaps usually does, torment young girls, the combination of a novel stuck to reality, mystery and even a certain supernatural touch. In short, all good reasons to start learning about this excellent writer, whether she is awarded the Nobel Prize or not… But, just in case, don’t take too long to do it; )

A few more books by Mrs. Joyce Carol reviewed: here