Emiliano Monge’s book, ‘Los Vivos’ (Random House). A trance for the reader.

The living of Emiliano Monge It is a book that requires you a certain predisposition.

“Her greatest fear is also this: open her eyes and discover that she is not, that the dinner of the previous night could be her last dinner.”

It has one Hypnotic writing. Difficult to carry sometimes. Or rather to locate. But if you persist, if you find yourself, you can feel that call that connects you with the story, JUsto as happens to the protagonist of the work. A woman who does not feel part of the world to which she now belongs, a world to which «It has arrived» and that has generated in it a feeling of absence. I would say in The living From Emilio Monge you can decide which character to stay, and I choose this one, that of the woman they call vestigia.

For me The living It has no synopsis. Nor has he tried to threatens this because the back of the book is quite ambiguous. Better like that. Try to explain it hinders. The living It is a feeling. A feeling of absence and presence, all at the same time. Of death and birth. Of atavistic fear, of the end of the time that connects with the principle of everything, as in Dark (Television series to which you also have to throw a long time to dance with it).

“The absence is curious, when it is announced” (this is one of my favorite phrases).

It has some Simple chapters, strange characters y Critical phrases. What he proposes is innovative, then, so far, we have always gone to death or to the end. In fact, when we read a book, the natural is to finish it. But what would happen if it was beyond that end that came to us? What will call us? Yes, in fact, we are already an ending that continues? What happens when you realize that you are the ghost of something? Con The living My head exploded. Reading is a Little trance. Nothing similar had happened to me again from another book of the same publisher: Electric shamans at the Fiesta del Sol of Monica Ojeda.

A priori, in this story you find ordinary people, like you and me, with their jobs. What happens is that people appear and disappear and part of this work is to “pick them up.” We will all agree on the great weight that the absences and presences have in the work. At times, it seems to me a dystopia, but also a story of magical realism. Together, a great reflection. It is as if people of another time and space talk about an open secret that nobody wants to face: what’s beyond there. And I don’t know if I’m referring to death. I think this is a topic that is treated in The livingin addition to the fact that the same title already invites you to it … but Emiliano Monge makes death a secondary character because he does not occur as such in this story (no one dies) and yet We all die a little by reading it. Possible? Am I the absence of the reader who read The living Why did I finish reading it?

“To think that there was another life behind this.”

It’s scary. But it is a fear with oneself. That does not prevent this book, almost certain to stay close to you, perhaps in your nightstand. Not without success have said The living of Emiliano Monge that it is a poetry of the hidden (I clarify: it is a prose book) and that the author is able to name the unnamed.

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(To expand) I recommend reading this interview with Monge on the Catopardo website.