Natalia García Freire

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A journey to the bowels of the earth

After years away, Lucas returns uninvited to the home he was expelled from as a child. The garden has been conquered by weeds, which blanket his mother’s beloved flowerbeds and his father’s grave alike. A lot has changed since Eloy and Felisberto were invited into the family home to work for Lucas’s father, long ago. The two hulking strangers have brought the land and everyone on it under their control—and removed nuisances like Lucas. Now everything rots.

Lucas, a hardened young man, turns to a world that thrives in dirt and darkness: the world of insects. In raw, lyrical prose, García Freire portrays a world brought low by human greed, while hinting at glimmers of hope in the unlikeliest places.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A very short, relatively dense novella-length story of the eternal balancing act between fathers and sons that never ends, never changes, and can't be resolved.

What makes this book unique is its fairly unpleasant fascination with rot, rotting, rottenness, and the hugely productive life the inarguable primacy of this process sustains. The role of the strongmen who take over this deeply rotten family system play is the first among those battening on the rot. The inevitable fall of the father from his position of control is prefigured in the title. What makes it a good read is its attentive eye on the metaphor of rotting...nothing in the story is even slightly out of sync with that central spine of meaning.… (more)

A man comes back to his childhood home and confronts his own demons while talking to his dead father. That's probably the easiest way to explain what this novella (or short novel if you prefer) is all about and despite being absolutely correct, it is not adequate. So let's try a different way.

Years ago Lucas was sold in slavery. But no, this is not where the story really starts. Once upon a time Lucas was the only son of a wealthy father, growing up in a big house with 3 nursemaids and a mother who loved gardening and nature. Except that not everything was as it seemed and both the mother and the father appeared to somewhat volatile - and one day the mother was carted to the loony bin and the father, who was probably the crazier of the two - if not the only crazy one, managed to lose everything, including his own life. But before that happened, 2 strangers somehow convinced the father to move in with the family - and proceeded to wreck the previously happy family.

The novella is written as a monologue - Lucas talking to his dead father - and that makes all these early memories somewhat suspect - we are hearing the voice of a man who went through a lot of hardship, talking about his boyhood memories. So was everything as awful as described? Maybe. But it does not matter - it is the past Lucas remembers - and in his head, for his decisions, it is the only past that matters. The text switches between the past and the present in almost alternating chapters (especially later in the novella, the switching breaks up a bit) and it takes awhile to put all the elements in their correct order - the death of the father which at the start appears to be the catalyst for the return and all that follows ends up being very different from what one assumes after the first chapters.

But the novella is not only about cruelty and humans being humans. Lucas inherited the love for everything living so his life is full of insects and plant life and the author spends a lot of time on these elements (if you are afraid of creepy crawlies, you probably should not read this). The edition I read (the one published in USA by World Editions) has multiple insects drawn on the covers and inside of the text as well, adding to all the creepiness. Add Lucas's obsession with decay (some of it probably clouding and changing his memories as well) and it can be an upsetting read.

Neither the time, nor the place is explicitly mentioned in the text. There are enough clues to set the story in Latin America though and someone better acquainted with the local differences may even see some clues pointing to the author's native Ecuador (which I assume is the setting). Based on the actions of different people and the lack of certain elements, I'd assume it is set somewhere at the start of the 20th century and I suspect I am not far off.

Despite all that wild life and nature, it is a story about humanity and of belonging. I am not sure it really succeeded in that - even our narrator remains incomplete. But on the other hand, as it is essentially a letter (unwritten but still a letter) to a dead man, the style and the missing parts make sense. I will not call it an enjoyable read but it was a decent one anyway and if the writer writes another book (that was her debut) and it is translated, I will probably pick it up.… (more)