Os transcribo la reseña sobre
UNA DEL OESTE del profesor de la University of Colorado at Boulder, Ricardo Landeira,
que ha aparecido en la prestigiosa revista "THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW OF
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE", publicación editada por la RMMLA (Rocky Mountain
Modern Language Asociation). Está obviamente en inglés, eso sí, pero para eso
tenéis, los más perezosos, el traductor de Google. Que es lo que he hecho yo,
no voy a presumir a estas alturas de hablar perfectamente ese idioma, del que
tan sólo tengo algunas nociones básicas.
"A Christie for Christmas" became, for decades, an annual
reminder for whodunit fans to purchase Dame Agatha's latest Hercule Poirot o
Miss Marple mystery installment. Reminiscent of such regular offerings,
although not as seasonally punctual nor -to date- as prolific as Christie
herself. José Javier Abasolo industrious pen has brought forth no fewer than
thirteen noir volumes in the past sixteen years to which one must add short
story collections, a couple of children's books, frequent articles in the trade
journals, a busy blog, countless interviews and many invited talks -in Spain an
abroad- dealing with his own as well as with the state of affairs of a this
popular genre taking root in Spain's northern Basque (Euzkadi) country.
As a successful attorney in this native city of Bilbao, Javier Abasolo (he
only uses his first name in print) began his foray into the world of fiction
simply as way to try his hand at what others, whose work he admired and has
been reading for many years, were publishing. The experiment met with almost
immediate success for nor only did his first effort, Lejos de aquel instante,
find a publisher quickly --an unheard of feat for an unpublished writer- it
also won an important literary prize, was a finalist in a second one, with a French
translation soon to follow. Since that breakout year of 1997, Abasolo's
fictional world has grown more familiar to an increasing numbers of readers and
critics, and though the individual works are quite different from one another,
many of the themes, most of the locales, and the narrative strategies have
become quite familiar to us. In the three most recent books prior to Una del
Oeste, his latest and the subject of this review, Pájaros sin alas
from 2010, La luz muerta from 2012 and La última batalla, dated
2013, Abasolo presented his readers with a serial protagonist, a former police
officer named Mikel Goikoetxea, recycled as the private detective Goiko and
whom he's recently promised to bring back for more investigative adventures in
the near future. At present there seems very little doubt that the character's
popularity will make such a decision an easy one.
Una del Oeste naturally should not be judged either by its cover
depicting a cracked compact mirror reflecting an armed cowboy statuette, not even
by its generic title which suggest nothing more than a western potboiler. And
yet, it is indeed and old fashioned western narrative which greets the reader
not only as its first but also its last (22nd) chapter. However, this western
framing turns out to be nothing short of
a red herring once we delve into a narrative so preposterous that it defies credibility. here's a text
whose failings are so numerous (anacronisms, intertexts gone astray, risible
appellations and dialogue, unlikely locations, ironic sides to the reader) that
these inaugural pages cannot be labelled as anything but a misshapen parody of
the real thing. A curious reader who skips to the last chapter seeking relief
from such malapropisms will only endure similar torment. What to do? The answer
is, keep reading, especially when confronted with a different typeset by the
time we arrive at Chapter 2, and certainly after a thorough browsing that
reveals alternating typesettings hinging on: a) the time of the
narrative (19th century vs, 21st century), b) the place where
events occur (Laramie, WY vs. Bilbao, Euzkadi), and c) the characters
that populate to pages.
There are twenty two chapters (ironically, due to a typographical error,
the last two chapters are numbered 22, the wrongly labelled 21 takes place in
present day Bilbao, whereas the real -and final- Chapter 22 returns to the old
West). Of these twenty two chapters, seven are set in a mythical
old-west-flavored Wyoming, the first (I)
and the last (XXII) serving as the frame for the whole narrative and the
remainder which serve as a construct of today's largest Basque city.
Abasolo thus weavers a ludic fabric of parallel texts different in every
sense, for in them the reader finds himself in two distinctly imagined worlds.
one set in the long ago Far West of Laramie and surrounding territories,
populated by drunkards, card cheats, usurping landowners, beautiful women and
mysterious strangers, and the other set in present day Bilbao, scene of a
murder investigation conducted -unofficially, as is de riguer in such
circumstances- by two couples, a college professor and his much younger
girlfriend (an unpublished poet) together with a municipal judge and his
policewoman lover, whose combined expertise eventually lead the storylines to
converge in a not-altogether surprising finale. White a subversive road to
postmodern feminine agency, it is no surprise that the heroine Wyoming ranch
owner and the equally comely aspiring Basque poet, their charms
notwithstanding, outwit their male partners and rid their respective
chronotopes and corruption, murder and intrigue.
In spite of the lighthearted tenor of his latest novel, frequently more
entertaining and humorous than Abasolo readers have come to expect from their
favorite author, his perennial concerns remain: drugs as the prime motivator of
the gravest crimes, corrupt corporate entities which consider cover-ups as a
routine business practice, the unstoppable power of wealth resulting in
countless personal tragedies, the insignificant role of writers and
intellectuals that forever render them ineffectual and defeated -none of this
can be swept under the rug. But then, there's also the comfort of a familiar
neighborhoods in a well-loved city and finally and perhaps for the first time
in all of José Javier Abasolo's many novels, the reader is treated to the
assumption of leading roles by female figures, and which light hearted though
it may be, it is a welcome and timely awareness on the novelist's part. If only
for this -though there are truly many other reasons- the reading of Una del
Oeste is a very worthwhile pastime.
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