If you like novels in which the plot has absolute weight associated with an infinite number of emotions, you will undoubtedly like The Echo of the Skin (Roca Editorial, 2019), because in this novel “minus” is Never “more”. , but “more and more” is still “more and more” and, as he tells us in that unforgettable letter at the beginning of the work, this is confirmed: “We are made of words, our own and foreign. Of love, of time and of words. Love gives us life, time kills us , words make us who we are and remain in the memory of others. Or die forever” (p.15).
Through a lot of material with clear melodramatic tones, the reader witnesses the story of a family working in the shoe industry in Monastil (the literary text of the city of Elda) for more than 100 years. Just this week Elda is happy because Elia Barceló was awarded the Miguel Hernández Literary Prize, awarded by the Provincial Council of Alicante for his entire literary career. And if there is any doubt about dedicating this book to the author if we read it, curiously, while I was preparing it and re-reading the novel, I received a message in which my friend and colleague Carmen told me the following about him. He was flying to Mexico, to my countryman. They are on the plane, and I am at home connecting with one of their novels, a message that transcends space. Chance? I don’t know, but I am increasingly convinced of the “unusual” nature of some events. Come on, a writer like Cecilia “gets” this fact and spins a jaw-dropping story.
In The Echo of the Skin, a title makes a clear reference to the Monastil industry; It is based on a mixture of ideas and vital concepts present in many of the author’s novels; such as the fact that we all know everything and people anyway. words always partially; that what happens in every house, in every family, is actually the living history of a people (Unamun’s concept of intrahistory); that it is interesting to know how desire works; that the fact of transcendence is very important; that every choice determines the next choice, that we all tend to have secrets… And besides these, elements of meta-literary reflection that refer, for example, to autofiction, Elia Barceló tells us the story of characters who, although they cannot represent, can represent secrets. For any citizen, the recent history of a city structures them with a high degree of singularity until they become elements of reflection and condemnation on vital issues such as feminism, respect, and personal freedom.
The novel is divided into four large sections, an epilogue, as well as chapters that are clearly an essay on the novel’s central themes. In all of them, the perspective of the narrative changes, because sometimes the story is told in the first person by one of the main characters, who gave the chapter its name, in order to contribute to the more readability of the work; and in others the story is traced in the third person through an omniscient narrator; This narrator is the one who actually organizes the temporal artificiality required by the structure of the novel; This is one of the novel’s greatest achievements. Also letters, notes, photographs, articles, texts from other books, interviews, etc. The narrative material has been enriched by introducing various document types such as. This allows the reader to fully surrender to the story through agile prose clearly startled by certain turns, leaps and surprises, completely appropriate to the story being told, always framed in easily readable paragraphs and short chapters. Remind us that to read this author you need to put yourself in what I call “Barceló mode”.
So why should you read this novel? Because it is a story that is fictionalized and written with the idea that the reader should never get bored, its narrative architecture is magnificent, and its plot, places and times are very close to Eldenses. And because it’s a good way to celebrate and participate in the awarding of the literary prize.