The Prince´s Act

The Prince´s  Act, Amélie Nothomb,  Paris, Editions Albin Michel, 2008
This is the latest novel by Amelie Nothomb. I read it after finding the first murderer Hygiene (1992). If the writer of Belgian origin, said he wrote three novels a year (published one per year), after this reading, I know how. The story is interesting: a person poses as another who died accidentally in his home and start life again with this new identity. But everything is banal and superficial. It is true that reading is easy, especially for readers who, like me, have a high level of French language, but the story was just childish. It’s funny how Nothomb has abandoned the Japanese characters from other novels. Currently she uses the death of Norwegian origin to create a contrast between the society of actors and where Bordave Baptist finally, the man who takes the identity of Sildur Olaf, the dead, finds his salvation.

Letter from a gay father to his daughter

Letter from a gay father to his daughter by Daniele Scalise, Madrid, Ed Martínez Roca, 2009 (2008)
This book, purchased at the Book Fair in Seville last week, is a proper trial and dispensable. My warnings to find me a text to explain the surprise of the father to the daughter not been met, is a panegyric of normal text, the enviable example of a journalist father who comes out very quickly, without conflict. A staff review the data in Europe the state of homosexuality. Two phrases of interest:
* “Reading taught me to love freedom, to look wherever they nest” (p. 18)
* “Being gay is not a choice but a life force, just as being heterosexual. Orienta our soul and body, makes us human and gives us life, full of sense today, invites us to do projects sentimental and sexual, and pushes us toward the other wherever you are. “(p. 87)

Random House

Random House by Rogelio Guedea, Mexico, Mondadori, 2008
I met the author at a conference in Melbourne of Hispanic literatures in July 2oo8. Right after he published his first novel, an evolution in his career marked by poetry and the micro-narratives. A jump to the longest narrative genre within the limits of what we call Mexican dirty realism. The history is constructed through several characters Bulmaro uprooted, the brother of Corona, who murdered boy Cecilio, in retaliation for the invasion of his property with another herd. Then Ishmael, brother of the first two, died in revenge of the former deceased. This will initiate a carefree path of the protagonist, Crown, on places like Guadalajara, Concepcion del Oro, Sabinas Hidalgo, Villa Hidalgo and Tepic, highly evocative spaces for knowledge. So, you know the driver of trailers, Rodolfo Alanis, who will learn various life experiences:

“Driving a trailer is put in the right hands. You never know if it will or not. And how or when.” (P. 111-112).

Crown will continue to be pursued by Cecilio’s family, forcing her nomadism always spaces marked by violence, corruption and impunity.
One feature to consider is the novel use of language, with great force and much appeal (with some finding as Congal, referring to brothels). With an excellent combination of the time axis with the intermittent development of the facts (a combination of past and present without any conflict) is progressing reading nonsense.

Almost never

Almost never, Daniel Sada, Barcelona, Anagram, 2008
This is one of the prominent authors in the Salon du Livre Paris (March 2009), which this year gave the sample to the new Mexican literature, a good opportunity to meet authors like Sada, representatives of which critics have called dirty realism. Violence, sex, erotica and extreme situations.

All this in a realistic frame story which reflects the daily life of Mexico’s most brutal and adversarial. A public interest in a type of reading that had considerable success following the publication of 2666 (2008) by Roberto Bolaño.
This is the story of an agronomist, Demetrio Sordo, who initially presented a humdrum life as an agricultural technician in a ranch of Oaxaca. Nevertheless, he decides to seek sex in a brothel in the vicinity where you will discover Mireya. His mother, concerned that she is not married, I will go to a wedding in Sacramento, where he met Renata, his future wife. To his desire to reconcile the two accounts, the novel will grow to build extreme situations in which the characters will not poderles control. The passages of the brothels are very chromatic and visual masterpieces, however, the history, starting with a very suggestive approach, decays as it progresses, especially in the final resolution.
Include the construction of the narrator, a foreign individual who is rude, funny, incisive, and ironic. It is he who gives reality dirtiest, most rogue and suggestive. We could say that the cleaner, just have some interest.