What is beauty This concept, which is subjective as well as personal, makes us think about canons. Throughout history, the concepts of beautiful and sinister have had different meanings. In terms of the tastes envisaged by the societies, one era never coincided with the other. The tastes of humanity, the way they see what is good or bad, are changing, which has always made this or that view of reality fashionable. Because, as we mentioned before, it is the play of mirrors that pushes a society to see the beautiful or the sinister. Beauty is just the prism we observe.
Written by José Antonio Corrales Ponce de León, published by Atlantis publishing house, the blindness of the bat is not just a crime novel, a term very outdated and reviled today: it goes beyond these terms and assumes a vision of an era and some. extreme conditions. I started this review by talking about the concept of beauty, but perhaps we should talk about the truth as well. With the knowledge of being a police inspector, Ponce de León introduces us to the underworld of a character like Atanasio or Tana. As the synopsis of the book shows: Atanasio TS is released from prison after serving a nine-year sentence for committing a serious crime, but his time behind bars has not served to exorcise the ghosts of the past that angrily harass him. For thirty-six hours after his release, Atanasio remembers the painful events of his difficult childhood: domestic abuse, homelessness, bullying, the first love of adolescence.
The novel is told with the protagonist’s voice, but it helps Corrales to include parts of the psycho-clinical report where we can be aware of the personality and show that nothing is black or white without justifying his actions. In humans, there are many grays in every personality. Tana is the archetype of the neighborhood quinqui, typical of films by Eloy de la Iglesia or José Antonio de la Loma. That criminal that started with small acts during childhood and adolescence and erupted with all the violence he grew up in as he got older. Because the act of violence is the only reason for so much hatred and anger towards society and life itself.
Blindness of the bat is the everyday story of a character that society fears but also needs. It is like the failure of the social fabric to drain the frustration of a flawed and manipulative system. Corrales shows the psychology of a character who has always been in his favour, with his own laws in the concrete jungle and a very specific vision of honor and justice.
Corrales’ literature has grown over previous works, has more narrative motives, and the characters are shown in all their nuances. There is a universal view of the human spirit in his literature, where each one shows its nuances without making value judgments. The most personal work of the Elche author, it is a journey or descent into hell for an irreversible being. Tana is the result of events that caused many obsessions to end in that animal part within man, and only a few have awakened. We can define The Blindness of the Bat as a chronicle of a life on the edge, a novel of a suffering being and its consequences.