For myself Spanish Literature
Month is now in full swing, the “to be read” pile has been sorted, with Spanish
titles put in their own pile and I can assure you I will not be getting through
them all. Without any semblance of a plan for getting through the works I
thought I’d just start and see where my journey took me – I’ve landed in Chile
(via a quick bizarre “autobiography” from Mexico) and am going to stay here for
a little while.
Another input that briefly
crossed my mind was the amount (or lack) of female representation in the
Spanish language (primarily middle and South America) books in my pile. Under
no circumstance do I want to delay any reading of female authored books, just
so I can have a “women only” exclusive month in August for “Women In Translation”
Month. It defeats the purpose if I simply avoid female writers for eleven
months of the year and prop up the statistics with a one month focus. The issue
is I’ll be reviewing at about the 70/30 ratio as per standard publication rates
for translated fiction.
“Seeing Red” has a simple
premise, a Chilean girl, Lina, our narrator (and our novelist’s name), who is
studying in New York has her eyes suddenly fill with blood, causing her sight
to be impaired, so severely she cannot see. This event was not unexpected, it
was always on the cards, but it still comes as a sudden event…
Only a few days until the eye doctor
comes back from his conference and sees the terminal state of my retinas. Maybe
Friday. It’s only Tuesday. Three days during which we have to resolve the rest
of our lives.
A simple premise yes, but this is not simply a novel about
blindness. Our narrator has recently begun a relationship with a new boyfriend,
she has been up front and honest about the potential loss of sight, she also
has a trip back to Santiago, Chile planned, how will this latest event impact
her relationship and ability to travel?
Again, these are all just inputs into a linear plot, this novel is
so much more than that. There is plenty
of material that talks about this being an autobiographical novel, apparently
Lina Meruane being struck blind whilst living in New York, and the eyes filling
with blood happens on the first page of this short book, not having sight is
the start of Lina’s journey.
On the shore stood Fate and he was
raising a question, an admonition. What did you come here looking for? he said,
pointing one finger. What did you lose on this island?
To highlight the effect of no sight, all of the other senses are
explored, and the heightened reliance on sounds and touch come to the fore,
this is a novel of the senses, although being a necessity there is also a
celebration in the strength of hearing, the reliance on memory.
He makes his breakfast and my coffee
with milk as I rummage among the black clothes in the closet, zip up my boots,
adjust my glasses—also dark—and we head out like commandos on a secret mission:
he’s describing obstacles on the sidewalks and giving clues to the initiate,
he’s the militia leader who supplies street names for her to memorize, inserts
the metro card into a slot before she can move through the turnstile. He is the
one who instructs her on the number of steps leading to the platform, and he
announces a long step to cross the gap.
Switching between first person and third person narrative as our
narrator “sees” herself from a distance when struggling with the reality of her
predicament, the unreality of a doctor explaining the long term blindness is
projected onto somebody else. A visit back to Santiago, Lina’s learned parents
distancing themselves from the reality of the situation, one brother avoiding
the situation completely, the other attempting to understand, all build as the
question of familial love bubbles to the top.
As mentioned in my “Distant Star” review by Roberto Bolaño
(translated by Chris Andrews)
there are also the feelings of being in exile, a Chilean with no home;
In New Jersey I’d forgotten all my
Spanish. Later, in Santiago, I’d forgotten English. Now I’m forgetting myself,
I thought.
And of course there is a hint of
the political;
The car shot through the city like a
meteor until we reached La Moneda palace, which appeared to me white,
immaculate, the way it was before military helicopters flying overhead dropped
bombs on it, and in the midst of the imagined offensive, with the soundtrack of
the dictator’s voice announcing his ignominious victory in the background.
A novel constructed in single paragraph
chapters, each with a heading, the reality of a bleak situation slowly unpeels,
we learn of the years of knowledge and treatment to avoid this potential physical
deterioration that happens on page one, instead of a journey into blindness the
immediacy of the situation makes it a journey into understanding and life
beyond being able to see.
Having said all that, at the core
this really is a love story, an exploration of what it means to “unconditionally”
love somebody, would a parent actually give up an eye for their child? The “it depends on how much you love me”
statements starting to pepper our narrator’s thoughts as the reality of her
situation becomes darker by the day. Conversations happen as recollections of
Lina’s and are transposed into the diary style memoir, we only learn of our
narrator’s side to event.
And our narrator is a writer too,
struggling with the reality that to write without sight is going to require
retraining of habits;
Even now, even here, in this very
passage, I confess it was not difficult to stop writing. It was much more
arduous to find a pen, wrap my fingers around it, know that crooked words unreadable
even by Ignacio were falling onto the page. Because as the world went black,
everything that belonged to it was also left in the dark.
A book that works on so many
levels, physical, metaphysical, familial, relationships, exiled writers, this
is another fine release from Dallas not-for-profit independent publisher Deep
Vellum, who in such a short period of time have unearthed a wonderful
collection of translated books.
Copy courtesy of Deep Vellum.
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