“Irene and the air” by Alberto Olmos

Year of publication: 2020

Valoración: It is not right

I start with a disclaimer: Alberto Olmos (or perhaps should say: the public “person” of Alberto Olmos, built through articles, social networks, interviews, etc.) I fall badly. He has always been a writer/articulist who has played to go from Maltete, of irreverent, of a free thoughtful intellectual who says what he wants – being that what he wants to say many times includes macho -threatened and boutades typical of what has come to know it ironically as “extreme center”. I have the feeling that in recent years the thing has gone more, with articles that seem written only to cause outrage and get them to become viral, so hear of “Alberto Olmos” implies, for me, twisting my mouth immediately and preparing to read something that binds me.

But let’s go in parts, as Jack would say the stripper.

The book is divided into two different different parts, which are located, both, chronologically before the birth of their daughter. The first part are a set of autobiographical or essay annotations on the pregnancy of the narrator’s woman, Eugenia. This first part has been quite unpleasant, because in it we can see Alberto Olmos Arteulista, who tries to be funny or provocative and ends up giving all the cringeas the kid says. To give an example, in the first chapter describes how he and his pregnant wife go to a party, and explains that before a pregnant woman all men think that “someone has run inside” or “that has fucked without a condom.” No, dear Alberto, you must think about that, do not generalize. At least, the author seems to be aware that he is generalizing from his own way of thinking, because he states: “Perhaps it was my own impression of the past in front of pregnant women, projected in the other men now that I had crossed the line. “Epostiviwonder, Alberto.

The rest of the chapters of this first part maintain the tone of who intends to be the smartest of the class, the funniest, and ends up pedantic and unfriendly. The book is full of phrases that would underline, but to indicate that they are supposedly deep but empty sentences, such as “Not having a child is the only definitive failure” or “fatherhood always implies that someone has to die” (?). The scene in which he describes the first visit to the IKEA was equally ridiculous, as if I were discovering the best kept secret of capitalism for doing something that most of us have done without so much drama for fifteen or twenty years (since Ikea arrived in Spain, come on, I do not know exactly when it was and it is lazy to go to go to Google or ask Chatgpt to invent a random date).

The second part of the book improves (which was not difficult); In fact, if the whole book had been like this second part, the assessment would have been higher. In it, Alberto Olmos Canallita seems to give command to a Alberto Olmos writer, who no longer cares about issuing a sentence about what all men (TM) feel when we meet a pregnant woman, but tells, with a suspense worthy of a novel, film or action series, the hours immediately prior to child That says the narrator, but it can be a simple rhetorical resource, the topic of the manuscript found).

After a brief introductory chapter, this second part begins when, in the middle of the night, Eugenia, that that day comes out, note that she is bleeding and awakens her husband. From there, the anguishing process of trying to the right hospital, to the right emergencies, find someone who wraps them and explains things, who reassures them, to accompany them during the rest of the process is narrated with detail and precision. In short, help them have a living and healthy child. Written with short chapters (which contributes to the feeling of urgency), this second part manages to transmit very efficiently the anxiety, fear and uncertainty of the protagonist marriage in the moments immediately prior to the birth of his daughter.

Although there may also be something cheater in this second part, because the narrator constantly plays to insinuate that his daughter is going to die in childbirth, transmitting (and perhaps exaggerating) the anguish of a first -time father, the truth is that this part of the book works very well, it is much more human and close, and even those more or less rough details, such as the fact that the mother falls over the birth, they are part of a realistic description and without a mitigation of a natural, wonderful and terrible process at the same time.

Summarizing: There are two souls in this book, as there seems to be two souls in Alberto Olmos: that of the articist of extreme-center, which seems to write the first part; and that of the fiction writer, which seems to appropriate the second (although it works from non -fiction materials). I wish the second would have written the entire book, because then I could have started this review by saying: “Alberto Olmos does not like me, but he has written a great book.” Unfortunately, the unpleasant sensation caused throughout the first half makes the general sensation of the book of discomfort, rejection. A pity.