The jungle sky, by Elaine Vilar Madruga

Original language: Español

Year of publication: 2023

Valuation: Highly recommended

In recent years we have enjoyed good literature written by Latin American women: Enríquez, Schweblin, Bazterrica, Ampuero… They all write, to a greater or lesser extent, about the feminine and violence. His novels and stories are filled with blood, ghosts, shots, abuse…

Well, they are romantic comedies next to The jungle sky.

I think it is the hardest novel I have read from this boom. And that’s saying a lot. What an outrage. What style, what rhythm, what language.

Elaine Vilar Madruga (Cuba, 35 years old, a lot of books written and a lot of awards won) presents us with a closed, suffocating and suffocating world. A solitary hacienda, at the foot of a voracious jungle, where life consists of breeding to sacrifice. As if it were a chicken farm, here the women get pregnant and give birth (they do not get pregnant and give birth) and over time, when the jungle is hungry, their sons and daughters (their offspring) are killed and handed over to the jungle The author chooses her words very well: having daughters is not the same as having children, having sex is not the same as impregnating.

The plot is tough, but it could have remained an empty shell if it weren’t for the characters, most of them women: Santa, Iphigenia, Romina, the grandmother, the dog… generations cursed and condemned to die and kill. To kill or be killed.

One says:

“You have to be tough here,” she cleared her throat, “so that the jungle can be good to you.” Here you have to give birth and give birth and give birth. And then stab the babies so that the jungle leaves you alone.

In fact, one of the blows in the stomach that the reader receives while reading the novel is the murder of a minor. Another writer would have made an ellipsis or would have narrated it in a gentle way: here Elaine Vilar Madruga rolls up her sleeves and gets into the mud. He tells us in detail the sacrifice of one of the children. So you are warned: there are dragons here.

You can read:

The jungle was a cruel trap.

Santa knew it. Everyone knew it. And Juanquito was going to find out today.

Whoever is marked as meat for the jungle ends up in his throat and inside his jaw.

In this novel, there are also men, and they are always despicable beings. When they are children, they have a pass; When they grow up, they become murderers, abusers, drug traffickers…

Vilar Madruga writes each chapter from the point of view of a character, sometimes in the present, sometimes in the past, sometimes in the third person, first or second. He takes us into his past life, into his feelings, into his desires and fears and achieves, and it is a gigantic achievement, that we even have compassion for (almost) all of them.

Except from the jungle, of course. She is also a character, a black hole around which everyone else’s lives revolve. And what does it symbolize? There is the core of the novel: perhaps violence or the masculine or destiny. One of the women already says it: You don’t play with the jungle.

Jungle Heaven is not an easy book. Reading it is almost an act of bravery, but it is a very good novel, one of those that remains in the memory, like a scar.

Signed: Raul Gay