Romans are entered or not; even in the living room or in the rooms closest to the street, as in the houses, you can be alone and stay alone. In my case, I know that in this house, in this novel, I will go to the bottom and beyond, because from the very beginning of the reading I predict that the dimensions of space and time will not be determined by me. reading, just as it is not defined by the author. I go into it and know that when I’m done reading, I won’t be out of it for a while.
For me, that’s what reading Cecilia Eudave has to offer. At the end of the horror (Páginas de Espuma, 2021) and now much more happened to me with El verano de la serpiente (Alfaguara, 2022). That’s because we go to the moments that are cute to me, so the author shows us a childhood, some games, and some very specific and paradoxical perspectives on universal life, and it has many ends; it puts before our eyes the illusion, the world, the incomprehensible and at the same time the most disgusting. The parts of life that we define and define us. Pure heartfelt enthusiasm. And always elegant.
The novel begins with a reality check, listing almost all the world events that took place in the summer of 1977; and forty years later it closes in the same way in the summer. The action focuses on that first fleeting moment in which the lives of some of the residents of Calle Francia are narrated out loud over eight short episodes. All events are counted from the summer of 2017 to the present, covering the ninth and final episode. It begins with a first-person narrator and memories of the summer of 1977 as a child, seeing the snake girl perform at the San Antonio district fair and being horrified by a «.[…] cheap scare trick Or maybe, because evil is cheap and everybody buys it” (p.14). This will be one of the formulas for gradually shifting the author’s vision and understanding of his own life, that is, a fact, a judgment or apostille with value, so that the story leaves the comprehensive level of the narrative and reaches a certain point. the level, the degree of existentialism, combines with the unconventional, which is a sign from the very beginning: «-Go beyond the visible, let yourself be guided by the eyes of the snake» (p.17); and that the serpent would continue with the appearance of a tip and the ghost of a chameleon that would even write an entire chapter in the second person.
Everything is perfectly worded, with no obvious chronological order. There are many lives (boys and girls, adolescents, men and women, sadists, pedophiles, fathers and mothers… snakes and ghosts) that unwittingly diverge from everyday life, creating different stories with different narrative voices. through the intertwining of parts of their lives and their merging in space, Francia Street, and time, in the summer of 1977, in a kaleidoscope of harsh and loving. And what Cecilia Eudave has accomplished, using an excellent thematic progression combined with a well-executed textual coherence, is to give emotion and life to all this and all, and to show that there is no argument in life. Examples are VI, dedicated to the scavenger. Chapter and his philosophical dilemma about who he is and who he is not, and above all; and Daddy’s V, which includes Bowie’s song Heroes, where the metaphoric, the poetic, the real, and the unconventional move us so much.
And why should you read this novel? Because it’s always good to open up to the unusual, to the extraordinary, and even better when you’re writing with your heart, because if you don’t break up, there’s no other way to tell things like the author does. and orient yourself to it. And because, as soon as we think about it, we’ve all experienced the “summer of the snake.”