Guiche. The mystery of the Loma Amarilla. Wide-Ediciones SM. Lima, 2009. 160 pp. Nicholas
On the slopes of suspense, anything can happen and the explanation unless provided not only the most exciting but the best-and revealing "more naturally" - which has fueled both the curiosity of the reader. This, however, that is an ancient and irrefutable formula has not always enough depth in the exponents of the subgenres of mystery, horror and science fiction.
güicheana production-three compelling and memorable story books and a couple of volumes of academic writings and in tandem, are significantly enriched with this new and suggestive title: Mystery of the Loma Amarilla , published by SM, in the collection Wide Angle. Fantasy fiction and science fiction, present in much of the literary works of José de Guiche, and his interest in poetry and narrative and Lima Lima (manifest in his works essayistic) summarizes and strengthened in its first-awaited novel The mystery of the Loma Amarilla .
"Happiness is not science, but on the acquisition of science." These words, which belongs to the master of horror and recalled Edgar Allan Poe mystery, may well belong to Paul Teruel , protagonist The mystery of the Loma Amarilla . Perhaps designed for a young audience, but attractive even for those readers who grew up with mammoth black and white televisions, this book gets beyond the anecdote to poke, sounding nostalgic, the charming Lima in the early 1920.
Güicho combines fictional characters with historical figures, among them, the versatile Luis Alberto Sánchez and Raúl Porras Barrenechea, "in a year of celebration and political tension: the first anniversary of Independence and early Leguía dictatorship, ie 1921. Thus, the novel achieves a particular realism (in the forms of realism more rational and more scrupulous verisimilitude), which contrasts with the strange events in the then remote and rural area of \u200b\u200bSan Juan, that forty years earlier had been the scene of Lima defense during Pacific War.
also explores the past Güicho Lima to solve more of a mystery: what causes the strange weather and emotional, and the facts that "accelerate" the love affair between Pablo Teruel and who became his wife Marylou and María Luisa. Paul Teruel, no doubt, is a lone hero (and could not be otherwise), an amateur detective and enjoys prestige and fame, despite his youth. And both mark his life unraveling the strange phenomena that occur in the Loma Amarilla , the hero will become an investigative journalist and never exercised his profession of cardboard: the legal profession.
Mental design of this character is no less interesting: a freethinker, even under the influences of nineteenth-century positivism, and as such all a provocateur comecuras -which is not the same as a provocative or challenging comecuras-teaser well matalascallando somehow, as they were young "from the Roaring Twenties' -. It is a practical gentleman, a follower of the experimental method and, therefore, prepared to reject any notion of a priori, all universal and absolute concept. Thus his irreligion, his intransigence to the faith of Marilu, and contempt for the superstitious and metaphysical explanations mechanical. Teruel, courageous, experienced and eager to learn and question ad infinitum , with the help of Porras Barrenechea, and above all, by Luis Alberto Sanchez, discover, among other things, that truth can be stranger than fiction, and that a Having found cynically in its philosophical sense, with a lantern in hand at night rural, overcoming one's fears and limitations, should be treated with great responsibility and commitment for the common good.
The novel is built and moves to arm yourself with a good pace, following a fine narrative tension. In its development and progress, will reconstructing a scenario by which we inevitably feel nostalgia, a tram and traditions Lima marked by good taste, but also stained by the evils that have survived any good intentions, including political corruption and cronyism, which appear to our recent inventions rulers, are found as part of the axis that generates the plot of the novel Guiche. In that sense, the novel balances well the pros and cons of an urban renewal time, but recalcitrant negative ways to solve major social conflicts of a country as complex and broken like Peru.
And in that path narrative proposes Guiche, the story of a country meets the individual history of a group of stocks varied. Advertised outside the enigma that involves the title of the novel, the relationships that are woven or affirming between characters in dialogue or disclosures become resonances and recollections that give perspective and texture to the linear structure of the book. Moreover, linearity is interrupted by interventions of a later time -1968 - particularly special year for the youth by the events of May in the French capital. This look over time, this reading reflects historic conflict between two times (1921-1968), emphasizes, above all, the importance of youthful rebellion, when it is channeled or inspired by principles that seek to overthrow pernicious and atavistic traditions of dubious nobility.
Reflection political, social and historical criticism of the disorderly urban growth in Lima, personal memory conflicts with the journalistic record, and projected youthful rebellion in adult life are some of the issues that are twisted in this fluent and entertaining novel, which alternates a story told in this for a past that seeks to explain away, make shadow behind a life-Pablo Teruel delivered to the search for other truths, as part of the exercise of real professional passion: journalism research. A sick disturbing mystery, that of the hill covered with flowers Amancaes ie, yellow-, which in the process of being resolved under some fault of character, it does make your skin crawl. Beautiful and tragic metaphor for a beautiful flower in endangered very precisely symbolizes a vanishing Lima also the indifference of its inhabitants into a horrid and tumultuous response to the protagonist.