We Are The End

by Gonzalo C. Garcia

Tomás' girlfriend has left him. She has, in fact, fled to Antarctica, leaving him alone in Santiago, where life is rapidly passing him by.
Tomás is a game designer - but he can't see his ideas through. Tomás also works in a university - where he spends most of his time hiding under a desk. Tomás' flat is falling apart. The band he used to play in is doing annoyingly well. He drinks coffee though a straw straight from the pot because he can't find a clean cup...

We Are The End is the smart and funny debut from Gonzalo G. Garcia. It's a novel which gives a new voice to the Millennial Generation - exploring the difficulties of finding your place in the world, and having to navigate it, too, with few guides beyond computer game narratives and the useless advice of the older generation... With its Chilean setting, fresh themes and perspectives - and its willingness to play with form - We Are The End is unique. But it is also universal. Tomás' loss and longing resonate deeply, as do his jokes. There is something of Tomás in all of us - even if he's someone who ends up sleeping in a tent in his own living room...

Genres: Contemporary

331 pages, Paperback

Published October 19, 2017

Reviews

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Galley Beggar Press is one of the UK's most exciting small independent presses, best known for publishing A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, but also responsible in 2017 for perhaps the most original book I read this year, Forbidden Line and the wonderful King Lear take We That Are Young, surely destined for prize shortlists. From their backlist this year I enjoyed Playthings and Feeding Time, and even Francis Plug: How To Be A Public Author, Dennis Pennis meets the Booker prize, was a welcome (if not entirely successful) attempt to inject humour into the book prize scene.

And I am pleased to be a Galley Beggar Buddy (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/subscr...), helping support their their mission to produce and support beautiful books and a vibrant, eclectic, risk-taking range of literature.

But inevitably not all their books are equally successful, or at least, equally to my personal taste, and I’m afraid this was one of the relative letdowns.

Tomás is a mid-20s games designer, working at a university in Chile with his colleague Jaime. Except Jaime’s programming skills aren’t great and Tomás has to fit his story design around the flaws in Jaime’s designs:

Jaime told him yesterday that their videogame has to be finished by the end of the term. They’d decided ( Jaime did) to split the work, so that Jaime would be in charge of programming and Tomás the story design.

He’s been trying to come up with a story for months now and he lied to Jaime about his progress. He told him ‘it was coming’, IT, because after all, that’s what it takes. One idea, one moment, and it will come, it must, because can you really live your whole life without one great idea? But nothing he comes up with resembles the Big Narratives, as Tomás calls them, of games like Final Fantasy VII, or Chrono Trigger or Zelda… It isn’t all his fault though. They only make cheap games for mobile platforms, bad copies of known games filled with product placement, pop-up ads for deodorants, horoscope readings and package holidays to Acapulco.

And Jaime can’t program anything without a bug either, and the last flash game they finished had to be taken down from the App Store due to its poor quali… It was shit. It was about an elephant called Bimbo, and he defied the laws of gravity, because when he jumped to collect coins he never dropped back down, and all you were left with was an empty screen with moving platforms. Disney bought it in the end, and rehashed it as a cheap mobile game about Dumbo, the flying elephant, and they were both allowed to keep their jobs at the university.

So now his job is to try and find a reason, a story, for any fault that might come up in Jaime’s coding. But is that even possible? Can he really write a narrative about all those gaps, all those mistakes that aren’t his? And isn’t it also unfair that Jaime can set out the conditions, all the mechanics of a world that he must then justify with a simple story? And does it really matter? After all, as game reviewers always point out, if the gameplay’s crap, everything else falls with it.
He opens the IDEAS book on the last page. He had been writing a scene about a man who could make rain go upwards because Jaime had messed up the physics engine again.

Although as the story progresses we realise that this is more an excuse for Tomás’s inability to actually come up with a coherent storyline, or indeed give any coherency to his life. His life seems on permanent temporary hold – he never quite gets round to marking his students’ papers, to assembling his bed, to repairing the hole in his roof or cooking the chicken in his freezer, or to acknowledging that his relationship with his ex-girlfriend Eva is indeed over. Indeed as he drifts through Santiago, and sees his former band-mates enjoying substantial success (*), he realises he may be suffering a ‘quarter-life crisis’:

He goes into a Fuente called Taca-Taca and sits by the window. The saltshaker is a Playmobile doll with holes on its head and Tomás laughs when he sees it. Is he really just having a quarter-life crisis? And worse even, is it visible that he is? He smiles at the saltshaker, the hollow doll, but he knows that no matter how much he laughs at it, some things just aren’t funny. Is this the turning point to adulthood, to getting old, when a saltshaker makes a joke worth laughing at just because a doll is not meant to be a saltshaker? But no, surely quarter-life crises are an invention, a farce, a story for the weak who can’t wait for a mid-life crisis because people keep living longer, and while blaming others for your misfortunes feels great, what is better still is to have no one to blame. If you’re a victim of nothing, then you don’t have to hate anyone, fight anything. It keeps you happy. Happy . And so, no, Tomás isn’t having a quarter-life crisis, because he thinks he could have done things very differently with Eva, and so he must blame himself and he must change. Also, he doesn’t want to travel the world, or quit his job to be a barista in an indie café, or get a motorcycle license, or take some other douchy exit. He would, however, like to join Yiyo’s band again because that… But he has way too much work. Maybe after the game’s done he can…

(* as an aside I always like it when one book I read has echoes in the, otherwise completely different, next – here the former bandmates enjoying success also featuring in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine)

Instead he gets more obsessed with trivial things – such as the mysterious chewing gum under his office desk:

Under the desk it’s an astrological display of chewing gum. Someone else has done before what Tomás is doing now. Someone has lain under the desk, just like him, and stuck about sixteen pieces of chewing gum underneath. He or she even took the time to connect some of them and Tomás is glad he’s sharing a stranger’s secret. They remind him of the times he and Eva would walk up the San Cristóbal Hill on summer weekend mornings and stay there until the stars came out and they would see the whole of Santiago light up for them, just for them, and somehow, in the sudden emptiness of city nights, he would know, he knew, that he could spend all of his life watching the streets and the sky flickering like a dying candle in the dark. The pieces of gum move overnight. He’s sure of it. No one apart from Jaime and himself can get into the office and so who could be coming in (or why) to move them is beyond him but it happens. Could it be Lolita, the remover of bench names? Or was it Jaime’s troll droll on the shelf that comes to life at night to do it? It’s always turned to face the desk. ‘What are you looking at?’ he asks the doll but even if it did answer, Tomás likes that their agreement is a silent one. What yesterday was a perfect circle of seven pieces of gum is now a square. He turns to the troll doll on the shelf that looks both old and young at the same time, which is pretty much what an internet troll is too, and he notices its big toothless smile and bulging eyes.

And spends his time dreaming up impractical games idea which seem to function more as clumsy social commentary:

Anyway, this game will be different. The character will be a vegan mouse travelling through a a man or a woman travelling through a maze. Instead of eating pellets they will get shopping items, all of them real trademarks (advert issue solved) and once their shopping spree is finished, they go to the next stage (called ‘malls’ instead of ‘boards’) and shop for increasingly more expensive items: cars, European passports, houses, no, mansions and so on. And what about the ghosts? How would you go about translating them? Well, Blinky, the ghost that chases you is now a Government Tax Agent. Inky and Pinky, who try to take you on from the front, will be a Worker’s Union and Credit Card Debt. And finally Clyde, the terrified orange ghost, will now be a French hippy from the Elqui Valley.

Re-reading the above – this sounds like a book I would enjoy reading. The issues – as also highlighted in reviews from fellow small-independent press fans Gumble’s Yard (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and Jackie Law (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) – is that Tomás’s life and observations on life are all rather puerile (a word we all independently used) and the book suffers accordingly.

But still a publisher to watch.

[Dessi Bocheva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very meh story, not keen on the haphazard character development thrown in at the end.

[Roz DeKett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this venture into multiple different worlds (for me) - set in Chile, a video game writer as the main character, a different generation. Beautifully written journey through the aftermath of a relationship and the hope blossoming at the end.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tomás is in his mid-twenties, living in Santiago Chile. He: designs stories/concepts for computer games for a living: is a musician associated with an band on the verge of stardom, lectures one day a week on computer game design: has a girlfriend Eva and will shortly join her on an Antarctica adventure she has embarked on, while building great friendships with other girls; has a loving set of parents and a successful sister; has a good group of friends; rents and equips new flat; is politically active in student politics.

Actually only the first sentence of that paragraph reflects the reality of Tomás’s life: he dreams up absurd ideas for computer games, but never gets round to actually finalising an idea and anyway his programming partner cannot really program his ideas anyway – their only App to date involving a flying elephant with a faulty flying mechanism; he has dropped out of the band just as they start to gain a record deal and is too apathetic to take up their invitations to re-join them; he fails to deliver a meaningful lecture or mark submitted assignments and is eventually fired; Eva has dumped him and his attempts to consider joining her never extend past either fantasies about meeting her and not even half-hearted attempts to convince himself and others that he is starting to gather equipment to meet her; he meets up with two other girls but treats them both badly due to his sheer apathy and lack of empathy; his father dies, his successful mother and sister clearly despair of his lifestyle despite him lying to make it sound more successful and fulfilled than it is; has a loose set of connections including some apocalypse-obsessed satanists who still regard him as a loser; does not even build his bed in his flat; takes leaflets from protestors but only to avoid having to engage with them.

Tomás life is one of apathy, which largely summaries my reaction to a book not least due to his puerile thoughts and actions, and his sometimes misogynistic fantasies and game ideas.
Where perhaps the book does succeed is in conveying a strong sense of Santiago (its rainy climate, hills and underground scene) – but given the inhabitants it portrays not one that would make me want to visit there.

The book is published by the wonderful Norfolk based Galley Beggar Press, which famously was the only one prepared to publish A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, last year published the fabulous Forbidden Line and this year the fantastic and Republic of Consciousness Prize shortlisted We That Are Young. Unfortunately unlike those books (and perhaps more like another of their books Francis Plug: How To Be A Public Author) this one simply did not work for me.

That however has not prevented me subscribing to Galley Beggar Press and despite this review I would urge others to do the same.

[Amanda Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose this when I was in the mood for something light and it didn't disappoint.

This is a book about the deep mourning we can experience when a relationship is over. More than anything it conveys Tomas' feelings. He's the centre of his universe, though the absence of Eva is the material his world is subjected to. Because we don't take Tomas too seriously, we can remain detached observers, never entering his grief ourselves and rather hoping that he is a caricature of our worse possible selves, an exaggerated creature - because surely, we wouldn't be so hopeless ourselves. Or would we? Could heartbreak distort our capacity to the extent that it warps Tomas'? Was he ever half-competent? Will he ever be again?

To read this book is to be willing to get inside Tomas' head. I decided very early in the reading that I wanted to, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on why. It might just be that he seemed so human, so vulnerable. I kept wanting some success for him.

The game play ideas and dreams do interrupt the 'real life' narrative, yet they always serve their purpose. We are literally in Tomas' head, in his emotional brain. And no conversations (he not much of a talker in the first place), could convey his fears, hopes and obsessions better than those dreams and gaming ideas drenched with his love sickness.

The highs for me: Fran on page 63 and 70 of my paperback edition
Matilde (just loved her)
A feel of Santiago, if only through Tomas' eyes. (I googled heavy snow in Santiago because I wanted to know if it really snowed heavily in the year the book was set. And now I wonder if climate protests are a regular feature of Santiago city. Might google that too).
The honesty of this book. Tomas is an ultra-douche, at least at this point in his life. Making him anything else wasn't what this book was about.

Enjoyed it.

'We That Are Young' is my next intended book from Galley Beggar Press and Lionel Shriver's 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' is calling me too, so thank you Gonzalo C. Garcia for this lighter read before then!

[Jackie Law · Rating 1 out of 5]

We Are The End, by Gonzalo C. Garcia, is a book from one of my favourite publishers and therefore a story I wanted to enjoy. Unfortunately I did not. My negative reaction led me to consider not posting this review but I try to be honest with my readers. The structure of the tale may have been intended as edgy, contemporary, experimental. I felt it lacked depth and coherency.

The protagonist is Tomás, a twenty-seven year old computer games designer living in Santiago who teaches at the local university one day a week. Tomás fits the often unjust cliché of the media derided millenial. He is self-absorbed and impractical, seeking validation without effort. Although desperate to reconnect with his ex-girlfriend, Eva, his attitude towards her is one of ownership and a desire for sex.

Tomás has recently moved into a new flat but has yet to put together a bed frame, sleeping instead on the floor or a couch. Eva took many of their possessions when she left so he drinks his coffee from the jug it is brewed in and eats his take-away meals from paper plates. His inability to move on with his life appears to preclude him from replacing what most would regard as essentials. He may not be rich but, from his other spending, could afford such basics.

Tomás is obsessed by Eva, refusing to accept their relationship is finished, something she has made clear. He drifts through his days achieving little, including the work required by his employers. When he manages to sleep he has vivid dreams. Between his wakeful and sleeping fantasies it can be a challenge at times to understand what is real.

A mutual friend informs Tomás that Eva, a marine biologist, has gone to work in Antarctica. Tomás decides that he will follow her, thereby proving his devotion and impressing her with his ability to be spontaneous. His planning is ludicrous but he does not appear to see this. If the ridiculousness of his purchases offers an attempt at humour it lacks urbanity.

Following a liason with a student, Tomás befriends a group of young people who work at a pawn shop. He attends events where he feels older than most, his concern at aging a recurrent theme. He is mocked for the way he chooses to dress and his general behaviour.

The writing is divided into sections narrating Tomás’s day to day activities, curated memories, ideas for computer games, and his dreams. The continuity can be somewhat fluid in places. His relationships with family and friends appear shallow and deceitful – his personal view of himself requiring that everyone see him in a more positive light than is deserved. His need to isolate himself from reality adds to the loneliness he will not own. His life has stalled.

I suspect that readers are meant to find many of the recurring themes depicted humorous, there is an element of burlesque. Tomás’s sexual fantasies culminate in a disturbing idea for a computer game that I found grotesque.

Tomás is envious of friends’ success, especially their depiction in memes. There is further irony such as a self proclaimed satanist named Jesús, and the absurdity of many situations Tomás finds himself in. He has a preoccupation with used chewing gum stuck under a desk. He considers himself busy yet does little with his days.

Water is referred to in many ways: the polluted river; a bath filled with booze that he climbs into fully dressed; the rainy weather and his lack of coat; a hole dripping water from his flat’s ceiling; his dreams of Eva and a house by the sea. Any joined up significance remains a mystery.

The roles of the protesters, party goers and various retailers add colour but little of substance. Tomás is depicted as impractical and oblivious; there are shades of parody, attempts at panache, but they fall short in conviction.

The book is a little over three hundred pages long. After one hundred pages an event was related which renewed my flagging interest. It was not retained. At just beyond two hundred pages there occured another event which was enough to propel me towards the end. That I was noticing such progress, willing myself to continue, demonstrates my lack of engagement.

I have the greatest respect for this small publisher’s ability to discover quality fiction. I will be interested in how other readers take to this tale with its often puerile representations. It was not for me.

My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Galley Beggar.

[Bookmuseuk]

Chilean games designer Tomás is trying to start again. New life, new game. His girlfriend left him with the crushing line, “I never knew I could do better”. She’s taken everything they had – except an album by Serge Gainsbourg and some unreliable memories.

Self-absorbed beyond millennial navel-gazing, Tomás is not a good neighbour, friend, son, brother or casual lover. He made all the wrong choices. Now his best mate is a successful rock star (with the band Tomás left), his ex-girlfriend is in Antarctica and he cannot up his narrative game. His university teaching gig depends on him being a games designer, but ever since Bimbo – the elephant that can jump but doesn’t come down again – his IDEAS book is full of non-starters.

Adventures with Tomás are just around the corner. He has big plans but planning is as far as he gets. His imaginary world and reality overlap as he floats into one situation after another until he finds himself onstage at a Satanists’ meeting, talking about the end of the world.

This is a darkly comic insight into a barely functioning adult who can shave, make coffee and single-mindedly try to rewind his world. Symbols of home and escape abound: mountains encircling Santiago, the hole in the ceiling, the plastic windmills, chewing-gum constellations and our not-quite-hero’s decision to camp in a tent in his own living-room.

A book to make you sigh, smile and acknowledge the internal loop of self-deception, all the while hoping Tomas might still bring his elephant back down.

[Carlotta Ottonello · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this voice, Gonzalo is very clever about narrative structure and beats, this story goes a different direction to what I expected; it achieves exploring depression and chronic avoidance without the characters being passive, which I think is a very difficult thing to do. I could have spent so much more time in Tomas’s head, could not really put this down at all, brilliant, insightful and funny.

[Irem D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too complicated for my taste. I felt like I got lost too many times throughout the book but the complexity is built in an interesting harmony overall. I liked the story and the characters :)

[Jonathan Walker]

Very funny: often laugh out loud. A sort of 'Lucky Jim' for the 21st century, except Tomas is more like 'Unlucky Jim'.

[Jack Firman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written and love that it goes fairly absurd at times. The structure of switching between reality, video game concepts and dreams is fun but at the end of the day it does not take over 300+ pages to tell the story 'The sad aimless writer protagonist is sad and wants his ex back despite it being clear she wants nothing to do with him'. Would have been more bearable if by the end he confronted himself about being such a sad-sack and actually had empathy but hey suppose that makes it more realistic.