The image on the cover is promising: a plump woman in a bikini sitting on the beach, her back turned. The overprinted leather texture leads directly to the title “Illegitimate Leather”, which opens the intrigue: many women with a voluptuous physique in common in Benidorm are disappearing…
Ana Romero Sire presented at the Occo Gallery in Madrid this novel by Ramón Jiménez Pérez, an Ávila writer living in Madrid with one foot in Asturias and known to this day for his masterful short stories.
This distinctive detective novel is so enjoyable and intriguing to read that it is almost worth re-reading to fully understand its linguistic and literary significance. At the forefront is a fast-paced plot that runs at a pace that always remains agile. In the background, there are language games, double meanings of expressions, distortions given by the author to the expressions (from the characters’ mouths), and direct and indirect references to art and the city. The history of Costa Blanca, some cinematographic allusions (e.g. The Silence of the Lambs) and literary allusions (Balzac, Dostoyevsky and the sisters -ditto- Karamazov, Enid Blyton…), without being pretentious. In addition, they sequentially cover mundane aspects such as the naming of bars (e.g. Mariloli), nightclubs (Don Gancho, El Pichá) and restaurants (El Racó de Toni, I Gondolieri).
The debate about bullfighting takes center stage (given that bullfighting has just been banned by the EU, leading to the criminal scheme of things). Reference is made to philosophy (Socrates and conscience, Erich Fromm and human relations), the power of the media (press) and rumors, the functioning of the Parliament, and bribes with “bills imprisoned in a rubber cage”. (p. 49) or good drinking and snacking.
The action takes place on the Costa Blanca (“A new day dawned in Benidorm, and soon the sun began to hit all the bodies in its path with an unceasing lightning fury, squeezing out the melanin juice.” », p. 128.). Its period is not specified, but all references place it towards the end of the 20th century. Mobile phones are just beginning to appear, faxes are used for official communication, and social networks are viewed “from a distance”. Landlines and cash pay phones still predominate, such as the phone at the Mariloli bar that “swallows coins to the rhythm of the meringue” (p. 147).
The author plays with an advantage and allows himself to use this perspective, thus winking at the future. For example, in a period when bars, nightclubs, and restaurants are filled with smoke and “your clothes and your whole body smell disgusting tobacco,” when you return home you have to take a shower to get rid of that “infectious smell” (p . 82), “Quico, bars and restaurants, including He was longing for a law that would ban smoking in closed areas such as (…) You enter a restaurant and there are more people eating there than eating” (p.98).
As realistic as it is humorous, there is a scene where guests at the opening of the Your Image establishment turn into “a hungry crowd (which grows increasingly darker with alcohol consumption)” (p. 120).
Torrente has a very light feel to it, some of the seedy characters are rescued by that refreshing touch of humor reminiscent of the Englishman Tom Sharpe. The heroes, although they succumb to clichés, do not succumb to them (even the tourists with their successful accents wandering around Benidorm). The mustachioed Ferrer, Member of the Council for Tourism and Social Affairs, and his secretary Quico, Bárbara, the Englishwoman who owns the Mariloli bar, Lito the police officer, and others such as Ernesto and Servando are depicted concretely, without the need to fall into Freudian approaches. depths.
We entertain ourselves some more with the mysterious and emotional Quico (who never eats, only drinks). He had to take care of the poodle of one of the missing tourists. Moreover, he insists on seducing his boss’s daughter, Verónica, with his culture, but Verónica prefers the winner of the “Mr.” contest. Package”. Anyway, Quico, a fanboy with philosophical whims, is adorable.
Real heroes are bulky, voluptuous, plump, obese, plump, in short, fat; Readers do not perceive stereotypes, as perhaps might be expected. On the contrary, they are depicted very closely. The author names and plays with language with his elegant sense of humor. He tactfully avoids us from any grisly details that might (we assume exist) about their fate.
The ending is somewhere between Kafkaesque and Calvinist (after Italo Calvino). I won’t say more because it’s worth discovering the secrets of the plot while enjoying this comprehensive read.