The Night Through The Looking Glass

From the introduction by Juan Salvador López

THE STORY OF The Night Through the Looking Glass takes place on a Thursday night in June in a small town where nothing ever happens. The director of the local newspaper wants, just once, to have something fresh and relevant to report on. The feeling I get every time I read it is that of entering a parallel world that is this one at the same time, “the reader comes to think not only that these stories can be real, but that they should be, because life would gain a lot from them,” as César Mallorquí says in the introduction to one of Fredric Brown’s books.

Fredric William Brown (1906-1972) is the author of twenty-two mystery novels, five science fiction novels, one autobiographical novel and hundreds of short stories, some of them ultra-short, between one and three pages long, at a time when magazines paid by the word. Although the numbers may be deceiving, Brown is probably the only writer who has excelled in both the crime genre and science fiction. Some of his stories and novels have been adapted for television and film: he collaborated on several occasions on Alfred Hitchcock’s show, Arena appeared in an episode of Star Trek, The Screaming Mimi has been adapted for the big screen on two occasions, there is a pitiful version of Martians, Get Out of Here!, Guillermo del Toro made a short film based on one of his stories and several films have been made in France based on his crime novels.

The original title of this work is Night of the Jabberwock (1950), which had a first translation in Buenos Aires in 1953 as Noche de brujas, later published in Catalan in 1986 as Nit diabòlica and a year later came the last edition, La noche a través del espejo, these last two thanks to the advice and initiative of Javier Coma. It is a well-rounded novel, with intoxicating precision. That is why it is difficult to say what I like most about it. The plot full of twists and surprises, the shots of whiskey, the criticism of politics and journalism, the close and credible characters, Smiley’s bar, the nocturnal and dreamlike atmosphere, the display of humor and paradoxes, or the game of mirrors and distortions with Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll.

I read this novel thanks to the recommendation of Alfonso Álvarez Lorencio, a bookseller friend, insomniac reader and collector of Alice editions (in the Avatares de Valdemar collection there is a small sample of illustrations). Alfonso was a fan of popular literature and was one of the inspirations for the creation of our bookstore, Estudio en Escarlata. Enjoy the reading, and the re-readings, and let’s have a drink to Fredric Brown’s health.

More info at https://www.reinodecordelia.es/