A book a day: Magalí Etchebarne: Life ahead

Language: español

Year of publication: 2024

Valoración: Alright

Last winner of a certain prestigious story book contest, this is formed by four medium -extent stories, all characterized by:

1- Be set in the present time and in everyday, domestic contexts, even.

2- starring women, more or less of the author’s age (how curious) of the author, without a partner, except in the last story and more or less medium class, with jobs, when we know them, in related to creative areas, without being directly.

3- The protagonists travel for a moment of vital uncertainty, of questioning or, at least, confusion about the path to follow, of strangeness, even, with the world around them.

Apart from that, the first and third of the stories, titled respectively Stones used by women y Ashes season They are closely related, to the point that they could be variants of the same story or one prequel to the other -or the second sequel to the first, if preferred; Both deal with the old age and disease, in the two cases women who were abandoned by their husbands to leave with younger girls and whose mental strength is razed by disease and age. In addition, we find another point in common in the presence, I suppose that with metaphorical spirit, of some obsidian stones that some women introduce themselves in save is the part to obtain their supposed energy. It is true, in any case, that both are very sensitive stories about the relationship between mothers and daughters – and, above all, when the daughters become “mothers” of their mothers – and about the inclement of the future that sometimes precipitates (not to say that it collapses) about the people who have been a firm pillar of ours for many years.

The second of the stories, A love like oursdeals with the lonely corrector of an editorial that travels to the Iguazu cataracts along with an author of romantic novels from which she has become friend (spoiler Or, rather, no spoiler: History does not go from a saphic relationship between them) and the fourth, Almost always desperateon the crisis of a couple formed by Ramiro, a quite unbearable playwright and Ana, assistant to a dance director who questions where that relationship goes and that Diantres is doing with his life … (In my opinion, any normal middle person would say: first of all, leave that cretin … but, well, I don’t want to condition anyone’s reading).

Together, a handful of stories written with competition but who, perhaps, too attached to the everyday, do not raise the tone but on a few occasions … when this occurs – in the second of them, for example, when the protagonist remembers the accident by which he looks a healing healing in his leg – the narration wins in interest and even transcendence, endowing the stories of a greater consistency, even momentary. Because, in general, I already say that they are very close stories to the feelings and impressions of people – of women, in this case – of normal environments, of a certain age, etc. Which, without a doubt, will be satisfactory for those who identify with the protagonists or be more interested in the experiences of figures of this types, but, I fear, it falls a bit short for those who seek in fiction facts and extraordinary characters or, at least, other than their own reality or of which it can have news in their daily environment.