A book a day: Manuel Jabois. Mirafiori

Original language: español.
Year of publication: 2023
Valuation: advisable

I understand the promotional artifacts of publishers. But again: good comments about a writer, on the cover of a novel, but referring to other works.

You may like Jabois if you follow his collaborations in various rather progressive media (without going overboard) or he may seem like another middle-aged writer, with a somewhat hipster, critical (I repeat, without going overboard) with social aspects and with opinions that, without being complacent with power, contain the right dose of controversy so that they are both respected and little inclined to be aligned with the majority.

A dangerous profile, I think, since after that image bohemian bourgeois one can find companions of adventures like Ray Loriga, Guillermo Prado or Eduardo Soto Ivars. I understand that in that packaging It is almost unavoidable to write novels. And these have an aftertaste of being starring characters very similar to their authors, or they even sound autobiographical to us. And that its authors always seem to come from spending a terrible night spent in the company of guys like Leyva or Sabina and aspire (wow, the subconscious betrays me) to be the missing link between Javier Marías and Andrés Calamaro.

Therefore, Mirafiori It can only be a bittersweet novel with certain details of black humor, always black humor of loser in the end things don’t go that badly for him, but if there is something that we will all accept, it is that happiness rarely helps to produce good literature. A truth like a temple that writers like Jabois are not going to question.

So the story inevitably falls into a certain topic, although it is interesting in its parallel developments, the fact that these do not end up becoming too concrete and there is no convergence, something similar to a climax, an issue that (if one opts for certain post-modernism) cannot be considered a defect in itself, but we return to the main question. The protagonist is a writer who, while waiting for the novel that will consecrate him, is dedicated to writing profiles that will be used when his protagonists die. His old girlfriend, Valentina, has known success as an actress and now, a few years after they have ended their relationship, she is going to meet him in Malaga. Well: perhaps the meeting may seem like the climax of the novel, although his perspective opens the novel and hers closes it in a skillful epilogue, with a change of narrator and perspective. The relationship is recalled in the body of the book, and I will not deny certain findings and brilliant moments even if those pieces are out of place: the beginning of the love affairs in adolescence, the course of the relationship in youth, peppered with many period excesses ( late nineties, beginning of the millennium) that punish and condition. Alcohol, cocaine, sexual life with fleeting guests. Very typical of the time. The scenes in which the novel unfolds are attractive and original. As soon as they meet, Valentina’s mother dies and the narrator meets his girlfriend’s mother already in person. They will both leave their native Pontevedra (a city where it is difficult to avoid each other) and go to the brilliant Madrid, welcoming of talents and brimming with opportunities of the time. With uneven luck and a relationship that leads to a routine that Valentina tries to break with furtive encounters.

Jabois obviously hasn’t invented anything and the profiles are recognizable. I appreciate the effort in removing the novel from the pure physical context of the relationships and providing light, almost ghostly touches, although they remain just that, in notes that do not take center stage. Even so, the brief re-reading that I did to write this review has been pleasant and pleasant, something that does not always happen.