A book a day: Agustín Fernández Mallo: Mother with an atomic heart

Original Language: español
Year of publication: 2024.
Valoración:highly recommended

Atomic heartLet’s start by clarifying, it is Fernández Mallo’s most affordable book. An author who is usually a victim of certain labels that we never know if they are attributed solemnly or with a certain corrosive irony: “postmodern” “alternative” “daring”. It depends on who uses certain appellants, on the contexts of use, some of them may seem an ignition (unquestionable, for me, that has the merit of placing literary issues in controversial code, with how numb that is usually the local scene) or , on the contrary, detach a certain sneer (of the swirling minorities in their exclusive areas of preservation of the conceptual purity that only they understand). But one can (should) read without positioning clearly or exclusively on one side or another of this kind of existential dilemma. My experience with him is unequal, and this forces the force to flirt with the territory of the contradiction: his works range between the exercise of banality to pop to the irredental glorification of his literary idols (Borges, Sebald) executed with the unavoidable scholars that can be twisted, but although their results may be heterodox, I have no doubt about their intentions. Those of Atomic heartwhose first contemporary alibi is to take his title borrowed from an album of Pink Floyd, are those of a writer who already has plenty of maturity in his approaches so that, in eventual access to classical themes, he shows safe and disinhibited.

Because this book is a tribute to the figure of his father. In the manner of the writer, deviating from the central focus just so that his dishes are justified and respectful, the pure structure of the book already clearly shows in his titles (Before, after, absolutely after) that death is the axis of the narrative. That he eludes the usual weeping tone and dodges the panegyric must be something that consolidates Fernández Mallo as a very good writer, regardless of the eventual eyebrows that can raise their most daring works. Another thing (but to see if canonically venerated writers As Vila-Matas do not do it too) is that some of his works transfer limits that obfusate some-be too experimental, load with some trans-gender pretense (literary, clarify) or even perpetrate some sacrilege. But here, in this personal chronicle loaded with anecdotes, notes, of wanders, what we face is a vital narrative, meditated but spontaneous, as a constant flow that has local moorings, such as room 405 in which the writer , at the foot of the bed in which his father is in the hospital, but also huge, and memorable exits to space, with the writer recalling and evoking trips both own and others, both distant and close situations in time, and implying to some Point to the reader in that kind of inevitable generational communion to which life seems to push us.

Appeal to Fernández Mallo de talkative It might seem a double -edged sword. Here, of course, many of his tricks are present as a writer, from pure verbal speculation to the use of certain scholarly metaphors. There are their icons and a certain flirting with self -fiction when you enter so much personal experience, without the intention of misleading or confusing. The allusions to other channels outside the written word, from his personal blog to images of his experiences or his professional life outside the literature. Also a certain social commitment and a pleasant air of personal blog, with an emotional perspective but nothing plañidera. There are too many points in their favor to maintain skepticism, but we must not forget the main thing for those who go through here: that reading this book is a pleasant experience.

Other books by Fernández Mallo reviewed in Ulad here