Love is a monster of God

Year of publication: 2023

Valoración: Between recommended and okay

Love is a monster of GodArgentina’s novel Luciana de Luca, tells the emancipation of a woman who escapes a malicious people and leaves an authoritarian and distant mother. It also addresses an invasion of flies, the burden of family inheritance, the arrival of two foreigners with Bibles in the hand, the amorous impetus or the questioning of faith, among many other things. And all this is transmitted to the reader with a rich and expressive language that captivates from the first page.

Although the argument of Love is a monster of God Touch so many issues, in the background it is very schematic. Also, some of the characters or stages of the novel are barely developed. However, the linear history and the cast and scenario blurred acquire thickness thanks to the scarce but forceful brushstrokes of De Luca.

Also the author’s prose gives body to the whole. And it is that the narrative voice in the first person he uses is lyrical, cadencious and resonant. To that we must add other elements that invigorate the whole: its achieved atmosphere, its suggestive symbolism and its intuited thematic deployment.

So, Love is a monster of God It is a good novel. One as raw as beautiful, as restless as moving, which shows that a simple premise can be surprised by a solvent narrative. Although in my opinion it goes from more to less, and has an argument a basic tad and a couple of little -exploited characters, it works thanks to its multiple virtues.

The Barrett edition deserves, by the way, my praises, because I give us a book in which it has spoiled to the slightest detail: from the great illustrations of its roof, countercover and flaps, taken from the oils of the British Lisa Ivory British, to the black pages that inaugurate each chapter.