Inclined more towards the story, ‘Uncertainty Principle’, ‘Event Horizon’ and ‘A Matter of Time’, Carmen Peire (Caracas, Venezuela, 1952) published a novel, ‘In the Year of Electra’, an intelligent narrative with a rare topic in our payments, getting involved in the historical narrative through a cultural event, in this case the premiere of the play ‘Electra’, by Benito Pérez-Galdós, which represented a kind of catharsis in the society of its time and where many believed that anticlericalism was being advertised, Vade Retro Satan for the right-thinking classes of the moment. Now she has just published ‘Mapas de asfalto’, her second novel, a narrative about life in a marginal neighborhood, Distrito Sur, a space that recalls similar neighborhoods in Madrid but that the author leaves unspecified to account for the universality of the phenomenon and, incidentally, intensify the sensations of the characters who in this way acquire a certain mythical, timeless air. NOVEL ‘Asphalt Maps’ Author Carmen Peire Editorial Less Fourth Year 2024 Pages 256 Price 20.90 euros 4 Max Aub scholar, she was the driving force After the writer’s unpublished novel about Luis Buñuel was partially published, Carmen Peire seems to pay homage in ‘Mapas de asfalto’, in a very profound way, to the author of ‘La calle de Valverde’, just as he paid a tribute in this novel. hidden tribute to Galdós, which does not begin to make us realize the marked personality of this narrative, with a theme that would seem to be more common in current Spanish narrative but that is not the case, that of the marginal neighborhoods that surround the big cities and that have their own geography, sometimes autonomous from the center of the big city and capable of generating unique characters that take us back to the legendary. Of course, survival generates obligatory ties, a kind of pragmatic solidarity, but this connection also generates sensibilities worthy of a poetic of marked romanticism: the neighborhood as a map of a mythical nature. Everything in the novel tends towards this recognition and it should be said that Peire does it in a very brilliant way and with a stripped-down style that tends towards objective description and that manages, therefore, to transcend what could be found in all of this documentary: « Perhaps due to the effect of morphine or psychotropic drugs, the fact is that Hercules continues traveling. An imaginary character has been built that whispers to him of fantastic cities and places, places in which words are imprisoned, others with solid gold roofs and lapis lazuli doors. Places where they worship hippos, cities, reflection with such clarity of perfection that you cannot distinguish which of the two is the true one. Survival generates obligatory bonds, a kind of pragmatic solidarity. This Hercules León is the central character of the book, he is the one who cleans up the garbage in the District, but above all he is the one who is capable of providing meaning, of trying to enjoy the life despite… and for this he is accompanied by a succession of characters who make this novel a kind of ‘Altarpiece of wonders’, Juana la Cheviste and Negro Smith, who make the neighborhood transcend the local; Flametti, the Italian street sweeper reminiscent of Hercules; the plumber Pepe the Nuts. The novel tends to clarify a certain social complexity but Carmen Peire relativizes the narrator’s speech by interspersing in italics texts written by Hércules that contradict her way of describing the District: “Who is she to tell my life like that?” . A very good novel.
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