Solitario Empeño

Author: Cristian Crusat
- Fiction
- Editorial Pre-Textos
- ISBN: 9788416453108
- Release Date: 01-01-2016
-Reviewed by: Cristina de la Torre

These are short stories. Each one takes place in a different location, usually outside Spain and with foreign characters of vague origins (Fins or Norwegians, or perhaps Danes?). The style is fluid and easy to follow and the language ranges widely, from popular slang in the dialogue to somewhat obscure and elevated. The text is very definitely XXIst century in many respects: the international boundary-less tone, the fractured narrative that jumps around seemingly arbitrarily and unpredictably, in short snippets, as if switching Windows on a computer. There are multitude of sensorial images, often disconnected. 

The audience would definitely be a young demographic. There is a touch of sex in every story seemingly for flavoring (nakedness, random erections, virgin suicides, nipples) but it is not pornographic in tone or intent. There are plenty of stories about aimless, clueless characters such as these around. But the stories kept my curiosity because I had no idea where they were going. Usually there is no clear resolution of the scene, it is just cut off. Many could serve as seeds for longer narratives. 

The theme of alienation pervades the stories. The tone of the distanced narrator is clinical, revealing little emotion. The strongest feature, in my opinion, is the descriptive power. Crusat uses the senses constantly to ground his stories. You can smell, taste, hear, see them. This makes them feel very much alive and contrasts with the vagueness of the narrative. 

As befits short stories, these focus on a brief event or encounter, with little character development or elaboration of motivation or causation. They are quite unpredictable, which is not necessarily to say that they provide earth-shaking revelations about life and the world in themselves. The occasional eschatological touches keep the reader awake too.

 

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