Comme sur une montagne russe
El disparatado círculo
de los pájaros borrachos*
(XII Fiction Prize "Lengua
de Trapo")
Juan-Aparicio Belmonte
Lengua de Trapo, 2006, 256 pages
Javier Sanchez Zapatero
Translation : Jean Burrell
The
Lengua de Trapo fiction prize has become one of the few awards
on the Spanish scene in which quality and creative brilliance are
more important than commercialism and opportunism. As is demonstrated
by the 12 books that have won to date, the prize has always put its
money on original innovative work, thus introducing young writers
of quality. Last year it was awarded to Caja negra,
an amazing first book by Pablo Sánchez which reflected with
extraordinary lucidity on the originality of artistic creation in
the postmodern era, but this time the prize has gone to El
disparatado círculo
de los pájaros borrachos, a splendid novel that confirms
the talent its author, Juan Ignacio Aparicio-Belmonte, displayed
in his first two books (Mala suerte and
López
López).
The arrest of an eccentric writer, who, weeks before the publication
of his new book, is accused of two murders by a woman police officer
with whom he had an affair, sparks off the plot of the novel. However,
and contrary to what might be understood from its early sections,
the narrative does not develop along the traditional lines of detective
fiction. In fact the plot's first start point is quickly overtaken
by the twists and turns of an entertaining narrative, thoughtful
and integrated, in which scenes and characters, part reality part
fiction, pop up in dizzying succession.
Demonstrating literary professionalism and mastery of narrative
pace, the author introduces continual surprises into the plot development,
thus ensuring that the novel is underpinned by a circular structure
that ends where it began, after passing through a variety of heterogeneous
scenarios and sub-plots. Divine envoys who travel to Earth to announce
strange apocalyptic phenomena during time-out at an American football
match, conspiracy plots dreamed up by evil cleaning ladies aimed
at research students in an elite scientific centre, government presidents
agonizing over bizarre patches on their bodies and even characters
already used in some of his previous novels follow one another in
a series of perfectly assembled Chinese boxes, which allows Aparicio-Belmonte
to accomplish the meta-fictional exercise in which everything can
be questioned by his readers.
As well as standing out because of
the detail of its structure, the novel is distinguished by its
readability, which is able to overcome the initial difficulty in
following an indefinable plot where nothing is what it seems and
everything happens bizarrely. Written in a fresh, ironic style
that perfectly suits the satirical intention pervading the whole
book, whose narrative eccentricities simply serve to complement
a ferocious, irreverent critique of contemporary society - and more
precisely the current political situation in Spain, which is analyzed
with acerbic wit by Aparicio-Belmonte - El disparatado
círculo
de los pájaros borrachos is one of the most attractive
and original offerings from the current literary crop and its author
is one of the names we shall most need to look out for in Spanish
literature's near future.
* The crazy circle of drunken
birds
