Review of the book ‘Huellas a contraluz’ by Ricardo Enjuto, a book about anonymous lives and past times.

It is a pleasure to return to the art of reviews, after a (stressful) period of work to do so with a work whose sensitivity and linguistic richness has left me enchanted. Is about Footprints in backlight of Ricardo Enjutoa novella published by a small local publishing house, Dervish Editionswho has been able to see the value of this work and its author.

What do we find in Backlit footprints? First of all, a traditional history. Footprints in backlight of Enjuto is to sit at the brazier next to your grandmother and ask him to tell you about his life. I couldn’t help but remember mine, whom I recently lost and who fervently followed this blog and all literary content that I created. Just as I couldn’t help but wonder why we don’t ask our grandparents more about their stories, many more interesting than the ones we have been consuming on the Internet.

Maybe that’s why I find a certain peace and calm in books like Backlit footprintswhich propose a world from before, sometimes silenced. Specifically, Ricardo Enjuto portrays the life of an anonymous Castilian family in a war and post-war past that we all already know. With different narrative tenses, the story progresses in three ways: in the present, with the relationship between grandson and grandmother and the narration of the past story; in the past, taking us to the center of the action and experiencing it as such, with the traumatic event of a young farmer who suffers an accident in the field; and in the very past with the romance and construction of life between the protagonists of the story, which is understood to be the young portrait of the grandmother who now narrates it to her grandson.

The author’s pen does not leave us indifferent either. It is sensitive, but forceful. Describes accurately, but also describes with poetry. I wouldn’t say that it is a fast-paced story, because it takes its time to explain things, but they have the right doses of mysterysuch as what will happen to the young farmer (will he be able to recover?), what the grandmother is afraid to tell (what is the most painful memory?) or how Julián’s business will prosper.

This book smells like roasted chicory, has the color of vintage, the feel of a letter that travels to a detachment in Africa, the sound of a blackbird and the taste of garlic soup.

Footprints in backlight of Ricardo Enjuto It is a historical fiction with no pretensions of history, despite the context, which tells the story of any family of the time because, I believe, it has discovered in anonymity the true stories of interest. A book to break away from fast consumption, to appreciate a style of writing that is rich for the senses and to vindicate the local as universal. The small as large.