My brother told me I should become an air hostess, that they’d give me the visa automatically and I would have more chances of getting out of here, at least for a period of time. We were in his bedroom, it smelled of the Mexsana talcum powder he used to put on his feet. He was lifting dumbbells in front of the mirror and counting backwards: 33, 32, 31 30…Why do you count backwards? I asked him. He told me it was more motivating that way: because One did not move, did not get further away, it was there, where it had always been, at the beginning. I thought that my brother was the smart one, but I didn’t tell him.
With Holiday Heart by Margarita García Robayo on my shelf, thanks to the 2020 bundle from Charco Press, I zoomed into the live launch during lockdown, to watch a conversation with the author, and Charlotte Coombe, the translator. As part of that I took advantage of the special live launch discount to get quite a few books from Charco’s back catalogue, including this. I’m one of those people who likes to have complete sets of things, and complete things fully, something I have all but given up with for the story mode of Red Dead Redemption 2, but that’s another story, probably another blog entirely.
Starting with the Novella Waiting For A Hurricane, punctuated by the book of short stories, Worse Things and concluding with Sexual Education, this is a powerful collection that almost feels like a torrent that has poured out of García Robayo in one go.
The characters are real and flawed and dreamers, and the situations real, and sad, and indeed the characters are rarely accepting that this is their lot, that their current circumstances can’t be changed, not even necessarily bettered but that life should be challenged and not be allowed to just get away with what it wants.
I couldn’t for a long while work out what it was that made me see the book like a tidal wave. At first I thought it might be anger, but that wasn’t it, it is too well written to be flushed out rage. Then I saw it on the back cover, cynicism, and the ‘vein of dark humour’ and that, obviously, was what drew me to it and why I loved reading it. There is a cynicism that is shot through with a wry smile. Not belittling the situations, or the aspirations of the characters but questioning, have they really thought about this? Are they really that sure that something else is better?
I’m looking forward to Holiday Heart now, and Garcia Robayo joins Gabriela Cabezón Cámara as another must read author in the Charco stable.
Half the girls in our year had gone out with Chubby Arias just because he had an island. And a yacht called Elvira. Elvira was his mother, a Chilean divorcee who all the other mothers said was too liberal. My mum attributed this to where she came from: she said that the further down the continent you went, the more shameless the women. Modesty was a virtue that existed on a sliding scale, starting out in Mexico and going to absolute pieces in Argentina. Colombia was located, conveniently, slap bang in the middle.
a strange kind of peace 