To add to the pleasure of meeting writers live, Gustavo Rodríguez, the Peruvian author of eight novels and a book of short stories, in addition to children’s books, is passing through Guayaquil this week. This is a happy fact, because the previous two years we missed receiving Guillermo Arriaga, Pilar Quintana and Christian Alarcón, who were awarded, like this guest, an important Spanish award, which recognizes the merit of the novel over hundreds of participants. There may be something of a fetishism in the nurtured pleasure of watching and listening to a writer, but I admit that I’m heading towards a more motivated book after going through these experiences.

Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende are the most translated writers of the 21st century

eternal montalbano

Now it’s about a hundred guinea pigs. Doubt caught me when I thought of the almost cryptic title for those not belonging to the Andean culture, where we are familiar with rodents that are raised for consumption and ingestion. But, as it had to be, in that name is the key to the meaning that is understood by interpreting the novel. The story is inserted into the contemporary concern for a lonely and almost helpless old age – parents have no guarantee that their children will take care of them – who has to be helped by an employee, a peasant woman who has emigrated to the big city. The novel is very Peruvian, it forces us to move through Lima and its surroundings, streets and districts with precise names and with some nods to the writers of that country and their works – how can we forget, for example, that the word street was the first titled instance Puppiesa short piece by Vargas Llosa?–.

Tenderness cannot be aroused only by children, but also by these old men with almost visible souls…

Driven by valuable imagery (with astonishing precision of similes), the story progresses from individual characters to almost group characters. Seven Magnificent Those in the nursing home form a living core that gathers to pass the time drinking chamomile tea and talking about movies – a powerful lifeblood that shines with allusions to the movies that most of us carry in our memories. The dialogues are full of events, and these six men and one woman keep each other company amid a hidden and funny understanding.

The winner of the Miguel Donoso Pareja Prize will be awarded $10,000, calls will be open until June

Of course, the idea and fact of dying is present in the midst of an acute reflexivity that does not become overwhelming. We are born to die, we walk with a light awareness of it as time swallows us up and, if we meet good people at sunset, plunging into those waters can be a kind of work of art, a sweet extinction, as it is with a character who hears jazz even in his last minutes.

It is natural for authors to look back and write. This is what happens in the case of adolescence, the subject of so many novels based on memory. But it is exceptional to look ahead and imagine what existence will be like with the ravages of old age: slowness, risks of falls, medicines, night diapers and the caring hands of others to compensate for the flaws that time can build into each person. For this reason, Gustavo Rodríguez’s novel impresses me, because of the naturalness of experiencing the ravages of years and because of some sweet and supportive emanations from the minutiae of reduction and uselessness. Not only children can inspire tenderness, but also these old people with almost visible souls, witty words, wise memories. (OR)