Jim

Jim, Magí Sunyer, Barcelona, Proa, 2010

L’originalitat d’aquesta novel·la breu de Magí Sunyer radica en la consecució d’una història ben coneguda pels lectors, L’illa del tresor (1883) de Robert L. Stevenson. Jim es construeix com una mena de segona part en la qual coneixem l’esdevenir del jove Jim Hawkins una vegada ha de fer front a la vida d’adult. Un futur marcat, sense dubte, per la manca d’experiència en la vida i pel repte de gestionar el magnífic tresor obtingut en el passat.

Aquesta és una narració àgil i atractiva, amb un ús de la llengua molt adequat a la realitat del protagonista, que dóna veu a tota la història. Una narració en primera persona que atrau el lector i sobre el qual es creen diverses interaccions que provoquen el reconeixement dels sentiments contraposats del jove i inexpert Jim Hawkins:

• “El lector ho sap de sobres per la meva altra narració, traduïda a totes les llengües del món, molt popular i que ja ha provocat desastres: aficions a la marineria i algunes expedicions, totes fracassades, a la recerca de l’illa del tresor.” (pàg. 19)

Pel que fa a l’estructura, les cinc parts i els vint-i-nou capítols, ofereixen l’avanç cronològic suficient –tot i la brevetat de la història– perquè entenguem l’evolució sentimental i sexual d’un protagonista que és presoner del seu passat. Una novel·la d’aventures actualitzada i sotmesa a la fina ironia que podem llegir en altres textos del mateix autor. Un joc metaliterari per a tots els qui vam conéixer, de ben petits, les primeres aventures a la recerca d’un tresor…

The Hygiene of the Assassin

The Hygiene of the Assassin, Amélie Nothomb, Editions Albin Michel, Paris, 1992
In this novel, we understand better what is behind a famous writer. Nothomb, with his first novel, wants to speak a prophetic way, a successful author who received the Nobel Prize: Pretext attach, within a different name to get away from reality. Four journalists want to interview him. For the reader’s interest is primarily the end of history, in the fourth, when a woman journalist is received by Tash. He is a man who hates women, a true misogynist. Nothomb seeks to bring to the readers: “in when they become women, as they are no longer girls, they must die. If men were about Gentleman’s, kill them on their first menstruation. (Page 159).

He is an ugly man on the outside (very large) and inside (very closed). But he loves literature, “I thought everyone was reading as I read it as such: this not only means that I need to, but also goes into my cells and modifies them.” (Page 69).

There are reflections on the success of literature as this: “It has sold millions of copies, even in China, and that does make you think? – Sold arms factories thousands of missiles every day worldwide, and that also makes thinking “. (page 66).

This is a good book to learn more about Amélie Nothomb’s novels, is very different from other better known as Stupor and tremor (1999) and Biography of hunger (2004). A good start for a writer so prolific.

The fairie´s collector

The fairie´s collector by Arnal Ballester, Alzira, Bromera, 2009
The format, frankly, seduces. It is a well-constructed novel and suggestive, but it lacks the grit, the strength you’d expect when opening a new book. Hit the jury, although he lacks the spirit that curiously looking for the same protagonist. A fictional recreation of the world of Lewis Carroll that undoubtedly provides the boundaries between what would be the creation of a world for children and obsessions of writers, including the mysterious protagonist of the novel is the diary.
The reflections of the pederast-an expert “tale” (p. 148), as he himself says, in the manner of Crimes of Love (2000) of M. Mercè Roca make you into the mind of the patient: “Now I turn into a predator.” Am I? “ (P. 30). Some doubts and remorse logical characters is a deacon of the Anglican Church and greatly appreciates the moral rigidity of Queen Victoria. As in the history of rock, as a reader, you wander and understand the complex world of the person who is attracted to minors, but they consider their action as a crime. Surely you need the reader of books such as this is not only an understanding of the character, but a more poignant reflection on how this is possible, that is, a more critical and direct message against those actions of which only transmits a beautiful description incomplete.
Fragments of large poeticity as “Memory can use some memories engraved on the stone of my dermis” (p. 33).

Like the constant references to “the other side of the mirror” that we relocate, no doubt, in the world of writer Lewis Carroll and the relativity of conceptions of human behavior: “I write books that are on the other side of the mirror “(p. 82).

Nevertheless, the descriptions about the joys of reading (p. 186) and willingness to address a potential reader (p. 197) the daily novel becomes a kind of game that attracts metaliterary undoubtedly the reader.