An adult woman, Guinea, arrives in her native Buenos Aires, after spending her entire life in Ramsdale, California. Vladimir's protagonist returns to Latin America and finds herself in a very particular context: a dystopia in which energy runs out, so everything collapses. There is no electricity, which means there is no gasoline available for vehicles, access to ATMs to get money from accounts, or ways to stock up on food.
These are the conditions that welcome Guinea in its new city. However, we quickly learn that it doesn't come from a paradise either. On the contrary, the protagonist forcibly migrates to save her academic career after the scandal that breaks out when the high school where she teaches Literature classes finds out that Guinea is having sexual relations with one of her students, a minor. old. The family and the authorities offer the protagonist the option of leaving the country in exchange for not making the case more public.. Guinea accepts, but his preference for minors remains when he arrives in his native country. The erotic drive, in this case, will awaken oriented towards Vladimir, Rostov's pubescent son, the man who rescues Guinea from not having a way to get to the city when leaving Ezeiza. Due to a hitchhike and thanks to the lack of light, Guinea ends up spending the night and then living at Rostov's house, where she will live with the man, her son and her two dogs. Together, they will face the apocalypse that Leticia Martin proposes in her novel Vladimir.
Here there are two themes: the forbidden eroticization of the younger man by the older woman, and the apocalypse based on the lack of energy in a very Latin American reality. The first is evident from the title and the name of Rostov's son. Immediately, it evokes the author of the highly controversial novel Lolita. Martin proposes a reversal of gender roles and encompasses a different approach to this prohibited eroticization, as it is a woman who assumes the role of power.
It has been stated that it is novel to find this. I disagree. In literature, I quickly remember The Beguiled, by Thomas Mann; The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink; Love Again, by Doris Lessing; In addition to movies like Kung Fu Master!, by Agnes Varda; Le Souffle au cœur, by Louis Malle; The Moon, by Bertolucci; or Malèna, by Tornatore. However, it is still an interesting approach and topic for times in which cancel culture seeks to censor any cultural expression that shows any type of amorality.
The second theme seems more ingenious to me, since it supposes a catastrophic future that is related to the crises we are experiencing today. The neglect of energy and the environment, above all, by Cacaseno leaders such as those who seem to be fashionable both in Latin America and the world, create the possibilities of a future in which the light is no longer with us. The idea of the apocalypse, as Miguel Giusti has explained, comes from the Greek “remove (apo) the veil that covers (kalyptein)”. It is not in vain that the Bible speaks of the “Book of Revelation.” The end spoken of is none other than that which suggests the end for the beginning of the different.
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