Original Language: Español
Year of publication: 2025
Valoración: Advisable
She is narrated from the point of view of a hospitalized girl in a sanatorium, who tells how her paranoid, alcoholic and drug addict (nicknamed the captain) forced her mother, her four brothers and she to leave Granada to move to live in the depths of the forest. There, cold, hunger, fear and perhaps even a certain supernatural element lead the whole family to madness, depravity and violence.
The chapters of Chrysalis They are overwhelming and brief (few exceed three pages and, if I remember correctly, just three exceed five). In all there is, compressed, much information, and although at times it may seem to reiterate too much some detail, they always contribute, because they make the argument advance, the characters win consistency, the tone of the novel is defined and the shuffled themes develop.
Prose is magnificent. First, because it is usually plausible when melting with the age, personality and oral registration of the first person narrator. Also because it is, how could it be otherwise in a story like this, raw, stark, even fierce, but at the same time sensitive, beautiful and lyrical. Then I attach a passage that demonstrates it (and who know the context will impact the double):
«The sky is black and very black and is filled with stars that move like comets from one place to another. The stars are dead lights, cosmic milk glasses spilled in a tablecloth, the captain told us. / My brothers are the same as that, stars, drops, fragments. / My brothers sleep rolled like kittens. Abandoned by the mother cat that you know where it is. Tuned in a green plastic bag launched into the river, with the name of a super -discount supermarket. Five animals with dirty and hunger hair, squeeze them against the other to get the heat in the current that does not stop. » (pg. 194).
All the characters of Chrysalis They have recognizable features, although the captain is probably the most detailed, complex and magnetic. It is not surprising, then, that the protagonist feels a particular fascination for him. It has captivated me that it is as hateful as tragicomic, as credible as literary.
There is a supernatural element in Chrysalis. At the beginning blurred, just a hint, a rarely, hostile, diverse touch, just to thicken the tone and atmosphere of history. But little by little he takes body, and although from time to time he resorts to certain clichés (a decrepit woman with claws, lights that flash …), he never feels formulaic. In addition, in climax justifies a couple of the best scenes in the whole book.
The only hits that would put Chrysalis They are two. The first is that the novel is a longer tad than the story would require. Despite this, at no time did it bored or seemed heavy, and the aforementioned brevity of its chapters allows reading to be generally intense and satisfactory. The second defetillo that I find to Navarro’s work is that his style, although clearly effective and expressive, is not always consistent. And it is that both the score and the granadine speech of nothing are taken from time to time arbitrary licenses.
Be that as it may, Chrysalis It is a great “Bildungsroman” in which horror does not come from the ominous forests and the creatures that dwell, but of the man, of the father, of the one who supposedly must protect you and accompany you in your growth but that does the opposite.
Ah, the edition of this novel is exquisite, even for those already high standards of impediment. Hardcover, covered with finishes, binding in cardboard … a delight of object, come on; A beautiful chrysalis for a story as terrible as beautiful, as fascinating as disturbing.
Source: https://unlibroaldia.blogspot.com/2025/03/padres-de-libro-crisalida-de-fernando.html
