books to reflect on life.

Today is a rainy day, because sometimes the coincidences are all together.

I did not expect to meet a book like that of Álex Rabassa In these first months of the year. But it was Rain Who looked for me. A novel whose synopsis, just as it happened to me with The living Monge does not reveal anything. A novel divided by stations (autumn, winter, spring and summer) and with several plot threads. I give you some brushstrokes.

On the one hand, we have the Typical entrepreneur of a great multinationalon a business trip, about to do (or do it) something dishonest. On the other hand, his wife, a relationship that remains in the background when the monstrous current rhythm of life is succumbed. Also His wife, living a difficult personal situation that breaks with his routine and that her husband knows absolutely nothing. And the story of how that love was forged (a very beautiful story, by the way) and Why he has to travel to India with his best friend of the university career. Their names are Gerard, Paola and Max, but during the story more characters will appear that will make sense of everything.

We have several temporary jumps And also We talk about timewhat else can we ask. I must recognize that I have misplaced some of these changes in time, without knowing very well if we retracted the past or we continued in the present history, as well as the first time that Gerard is in India, which does not know one to which plot thread, but the puzzle, because in the end Rain It is a small puzzle of meanings, it is possible to ride perfectly.

When I said at the beginning of this review that I did not expect to meet a novel like Rain In the first months of my year it is because it leads to A deep reflection for which perhaps it is still early (a very western thought of always leaving the reflections for the end and not for the beginning -I blames me -). It is a book that when I began to read it I realized that I was very well written, that Álex Rabassa seemed very safe with him and that he kept enough mysteries to hook me.

He was afraid of the obligation to have to choose a path …, not to feel free.

Rain goes on those moments of life that put us in check. That is, it goes from so many people who in our life loop, we stop appreciating the important. And modern fears and concerns. For example: waste time. Can we really waste time? That is why Gerard perfectly reflects that type of ambitious, winning person, delivered to his work, obsessed of control, worried all the time, forgetting about the little things that give meaning to our existence. Paola, her wife, for me is the opposite, although she too has fallen from the gray of the rain of adult timea rain that he loved before. However, it still keeps more vivacity, more passion and I think he believes much more than Gerard in the “Magic” of life. It is she who asks her Old to India For a time when Paola must disappear and nobody has to know why.

India. What a place so full of contrasts. I suppose that more or less we all generate the same mental images when we think of this country. On the one hand, we are very colorful and, on the other, a lot of poverty. In addition, it is a place where we also think when we talk about spirituality. It seems that pilgrimage to India is a way of encountering an ancestral wisdom. Anyway, we surely have many predested images in our mind and Rain It does bring us a bit to this cliché of India, but in a very personal way. We will see it described through their landscapes, their customs and, also, of its inhabitants. Some of them will have a voice in Rain. And there will be a wise, Savir, very important for Paola that will also be very important for Gerard.

We will meditate at times. If we end up knowing when we finish the story of Álex Rabassa is that nothing remains and everything changes. Therefore, also, there is a change inside us. We are not the same when starting to read Rain And at the end of it. This is important that you know. But if you do not read the book, the time you would have invested in it, you will do it in something else that, surely, will also change you. Anyway, I would like you to understand me better, hearing the story of Rabassa. It is worth it.

I have underlined many phrases. Many.

Life was a matter of decisions.

And something that I found curious about history is that You have no pretensions to resemble anything before. This is crucial. If I tell you that the typical entrepreneur is, or a hospital in between, or a trip to India with a friend, just as it happened with the previous exercise of the Asian country, most likely we begin to make hypotheses of what will happen. However, Rain He leaves us with open questions. Finally, it does not go on a disease. It does not go on a spiritual awakening. It does not leave a billionaire work and go to the field to sow potatoes. There is love. There is a family. There are different cultural. There are reunions. There are farewells. There is a writer, Álex Rabassa, that there is wanted to talk about universal issues without falling into topics and that leaves for the end an answer that only the reader can answer.

Rain It is a climatological state, but also a story that we are going to tell each of us differently.

I liked the end a lot, even though I don’t like the endings where they don’t give it all done, really. However, I feel that it could not have been otherwise for Rain of Álex Rabassa. Many people have passed through just 215 pages and many things have also happened. For all this it seems to me that it is a very special reading. Especially for one reason: Rabassa does not pretend that this rain drags us, does not want to indoctrinate at all. Only tell a story and that everyone feels their own weather phenomenon.

Álex, correct me if I’m wrong.