Original Language: English
Year of publication: 2025
Translation: Esther Cruz Santaella
Valoración: Advisable
León It could be the bonus track of the thematic week “Parents of book” that we mounted a couple of months ago because it is an autobiographical novel in which the author explores in the relationship with a father “not quite perfect”, in which he tells us about silent and solitary splits, of silences and words that hide the truth, of love (Why not?), Of abandonments, reunions, amputations, life, life, death,
Being more concise, I would say that this novel is a map of the affections built with the pieces of a puzzle. Better so? Because this is not the history of the life of Sonya Walger or his father but are stories of their lives, their relationship and the relationship of both with other members of the family universe.
The idea of puzzles is key in the formal aspect of the book (temporary jumps, isolated episodes) and transmits fragmentarity and dissociations of family life, although it plays a bit against the book in the initial part.
One has the sensation, in Essss first pages, it is to read a series of unconnected episodes, of not seeing too well where the author wants to get. This, together with some scene that borders the “TVILM”, leaves a bittersweet aftertaste.
Fortunately, the book grows (and much) in its second half. The pieces are assembling, the image of the father becomes more clear, the loneliness and the dislocation that claims the characters and the effects of the passage of time on how we observe others and how they observe us are reflected in all their crudeness. Especially brilliant, due to the background and form conjunction, they seem to me two chapters: adrenaline and intermediate.
I wonder how many years of my life I have spent longing for my father, and now he’s here and I want him to leave.
In summary, a book that, despite certain initial hesitation, grows with the passage of the pages, which avoids falling into idolatry, self -complacency or in the “adjustment of accounts” and that leaves this reader thinking if he will be doing it more or less good (mean what he means) in that of paternity.
Source: https://unlibroaldia.blogspot.com/2025/06/sonya-walger-leon.html
