Recently read on the edge, rafael chirbes. A bleak, enticing realism which vividly elucidates Spain's garherer-hunter existence -- the financial crisis hit them hard, degrading it to a world we never thought could experience devastion, defined by fearful friction, xenophobia and incessant paranoia; all actions are imbued with cynicism. Every day is a quest for food for the kids, not to mention the main character, filling the kids' juice bottle with water in ordet to spare him and primarily his kids embarrassemt. The prose is sparse but not abrupt, but rather succesful in portraying a range of three-dimensional human beings. The novel is filled with despair, with brilliant pacing and an uncertain anhedonia illustrating a nihilistic reality in which drugs, loneliness, decadence, phenomenology eradicated, replaced by the banal and the primal; but chirbes delves into each individuals consiousness, with clarity and detail explains the ennui and distorted beliefs -- initiated by the hopelessness and melancholy: both who are direct results of a corrupt, demented government.
The temporal shifts, fragments of memories and absurdity do enable some pitch-black comedic parts: an example of perfectly crafted variation.
Overall: brilliant theme, stilistically balanced, with a narrative splendidly unravelling the solipsism slowly evolving alienation and soon solipsism, obliterating his identity and transforming him to a faceless animal, struggling for his subsistence.
Modern classic!
