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.
From this, we have an interesting idea of what will end and how to go back to what was before to start again. The world of energy is ending. The world we experience, where running out of battery on your phone means not being able to reach a destination or not being able to make a payment or read a restaurant menu, disappears in Martin's novel after highlighting the vulnerability it entails. Given this, the characters resolve to return to what they once were: gatherers, hunters, farmers.
The apocalypse announces a future world that will be free of the evils that destroy us today, a world without the destructive modernity to which we have arrived as a civilization. In this context, Vladimir and Guinea appear as a kind of chosen ones who will be able to rise from the ashes and create a new model. This is what we see in the last chapter of the novel, when, finally, both characters unleash their drives.
Now, how are both topics connected? Well, it's simple, the emotional sexual union of these two characters represents a new biological sexual order to which society is accustomed. Martin proposes a twist to the roles of power in a love relationship or emotional sex based on taboo, but without leaving aside tenderness and humanity.
In the world in crisis, what is not accepted appears as a new option for a new life. Thus, the author leaves us a series of questions that unfold in a story that flows with wonderful speed and lightness. The book can be read in one sitting, and one enjoys being immersed in the tensions that arise in her story. As Luna Miguel has rightly pointed out, the author has shown that “talking about sex and desire is not necessarily talking about love; that talking about the end of the world and the blackout of the world is not necessarily talking about heroism; and finally, that you can write a hard and dangerous novel but also full of tenderness.”
I think Vladimir is not a great novel nor is it close to being one, but it is undoubtedly a captivating story, very well written, and with very well thought out themes.
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