Following our latest episodes, dear reader, in this one you barely get, I want to talk to you about Franco Félix, a very unique and ubiquitous Mexican writer whose latest book, Lengua dormida, was published months ago and will be , I believe, will be the ultimate affirmation of his talent, a talent rooted in excess, apparent chaos, contrast and risk, both in form and substance.
Born in northern Mexico, in the furnace city of Hermosillo, Félix’s previous books, among which I like to point out Schrödinger’s cats, are a short novel in which a desert wants to devour everything, the protagonists fight with the narrators and the author demonstrates unprecedented mastery of dialogue and the multiplicity of voices and silences – and Kill Darwin – a mad novel of total ambition, in which Félix plays with language and time at will, and in which the descendants of the old man appear ingenious, who after several generations of inbreeding would appear to be biological being self-destructive must confront God, who has come to earth disguised as an extraterrestrial – announced that sooner or later its author would write an impressive book.
a wonderful book
Before I tell you here what lengua dormida is all about, dear reader, I want to talk about its form, because it is primarily in its name – Félix, who understands that in order to be unique, a book must be one universe in itself, but also a game and a challenge for the reader, shows, by the way, that there is no such thing as difficult literature, but there is demanding literature in the sense that it demands more time from the reader than the usual questions of current books – that Félix ‘ novel, which is at once biography, diary and notebook, becomes an impressive book: Sleepy Tongue is the story of the search for history itself, as well as the emergence of a unique language that crosses the common language and a window to a space, in which time, like the railroad tracks, crosses the plain on some rails that go and others that come; On the pages of Félix’s book, time moves forward, but also backwards, because the life of the protagonist, the author’s mother, actually consists of two lives: the one she once had in the city of Mexico and the one he had , back in Hermosillo.
Well, Lengua dormida is also an impressive book for what it tells, not just for the way it is told: Based on a seemingly inconsequential accident – a woman, Ana María, falls in the kitchen of her home – , the novel’s protagonist, falls into a spiral of hospital visits that years later ends with her being bedridden in a coma. His son will then have to tell us out of fear, pain, memory, doubt, and literature with unashamed humor—another virtue of the Sleepy Language is that it brings us to the brink of tears with the ease with which we make ourselves laugh— , the life of this woman who was the pillar of her family, neighborhood and party in Hermosillo, and that of this other woman, herself, who years ago left another family, neighborhood and parties.
In the nest and with humor
As in any impressive novel, the story that is the main flow of Sleeping Language is full of tributaries or, to put it another way – a way that visually does Félix’s book credit – the showcase that defines this work holds countless Unique pieces: pop and action figures, horror film reels and characters who escaped them, polyphonic cuckoos and polyphonic philosophers, outrageous drunkenness, ghostly apparitions bordering on schizophrenia, and a small dog that must have been the beginning of big business, but they is raped while walking by the narrator’s father, who is unaware of the abuse because diabetes has blinded him.
In Lengua dormida the humor is also impressive, but better an example to invite you to conclude this book or one of Félix, the one I mentioned or these others: The Naigu Curse, A Thousand Dead Monkeys, Asperger’s Theory or Kafka in a Bathing suit (by the way, if you finish reading the following fragment, you will of course wonder what will have happened, whether they put the garlic in it or not, well, the answer can be found in Tongue dormida):
“My parents were desperate for a solution to the fear. They tried everything, they took me with massagers, with priests, with doctors, nothing worked. It even occurred to an hourglass that they could cure me by sticking garlic up my ass.
-I eat? In…” My mother was incredulous.
– Yes, in the ass. But unfortunately no one believes in these things,” said Doña Marta.
—I don’t know what if he becomes a whore? My father intervened.
“It’s a risk you have to take,” the Hourglass concluded.
coordinates
Sleepy Tongue was published by Sexto Piso. Kill Darwin can be found in the Trojan Horse and Schrodinger’s Cats from Inland editions.
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