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Of Saints and Miracles
This mesmerizing novel opens with a fratricide in a beautiful if impoverished region of northern Spain. The perpetrator, Marcelino, lives alone in his parental home where he recalls having doted on his baby brother and sought to protect their mother from their father’s drunken rages. Author Manuel Astur’s poetic language and seamless blend of lyricism with the grotesque renders this book a treasure for the reader that includes the mother’s bewitching tales about the sun, the moon, and an invisible horse-drawn carriage of death. Glimpses into other villagers’ lives reveal a community that gathers to slaughter pigs for feasts and to confront a mysterious plague of white worms. The mountainous green of rural Asturias is as much a character as these residents, from whom Marcelino flees to the wild peaks after his brother’s slaying, becoming a cult hero as he evades authorities. Of Saints and Miracles is a sensuous portrayal of an outcast’s struggle to survive in a chaotic world of both tragedy and magical splendor.
208 pages, Paperback
First published February 26, 2020
20 people are currently reading
971 people want to read
About the author
Manuel Astur
10 books37 followersManuel Astur (Grado, Asturias, 1980) es escritor, periodista, poeta y ha sido productor musical. Entre sus muchas peripecias vitales destaca haber sido editor de la conocida revista cultural madrileña Arto! Ha residido en Madrid y Barcelona y colabora con diversas revistas nacionales. Ha publicado relatos en varias antologías, destacando especialmente Mi madre es un pez (Libros del Silencio, 2012) o Nómadas (Playa de Ákaba, 2014) y ha escrito el poemario Y encima es mi cumpleaños (Esto no es Berlín Ediciones, 2013). Quince días para acabar con el mundo es su primera novela.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews
April 21, 2023
This is another fantastic entry from small publishers Peirene Press (UK) and New Vessel Press (US). Of Saints and Miracles is Claire Wadie's English translation of San, el libro de los milagros by Manuel Astur. Wadie gets high marks for this translation, rendering the prose with fluidity to tell a compelling tale. The story is set in a remote area of Asturias in northern Spain. Astur takes as his cue a historical event from 2011 in which a farmer killed his brother and fled into the mountains. In Astur's hands, the story becomes one of legend, as we see an unremarkable character transform into something of a folk hero. I'm not usually a fan of fiction that tracks historical events, but this is a highly entertaining story that won me over.
May 29, 2022
This is a remarkable book. One reason it is remarkable is that whilst I was finding it very difficult to put it down, I also felt completely unmoored while reading it. Another reason it is remarkable is that it isn’t like anything else I’ve read. Ever, I think.
I honestly think I need to read it again to stand any chance of reviewing it, so I am not really going to try to do that just yet. I plan to read a few other books and then come back to this for a second run through. At that point, I might just be able to get some thoughts in order. Although it feels equally possible that I will still be lost at sea.
The book’s blurb gives a bit of background and I think it’s best to go into the book with as little foreknowledge as possible. A moment of uncontrolled anger sparks a chain of events that can’t be reversed sets the scene but that hardly tells you what you are heading into. Here we have time mixed up and all happening simultaneously. There’s a repeated quote (slight variations) that goes:
We have the voice and we have the time. We have all time.
And here we have fables and magical realism. We have poetry. We have a crime story.
It’s a book that requires a high level of concentration from the reader. Often the narrative will approach its point very tangentially and the reader can be forgiven for wondering why they are reading about something until, sometimes quite some time later, the penny drops. Although for this reader, and hence the plan to re-read, not all pennies dropped.
It’s remarkable, but I have the feeling I don’t appreciate how remarkable from just one reading.
I honestly think I need to read it again to stand any chance of reviewing it, so I am not really going to try to do that just yet. I plan to read a few other books and then come back to this for a second run through. At that point, I might just be able to get some thoughts in order. Although it feels equally possible that I will still be lost at sea.
The book’s blurb gives a bit of background and I think it’s best to go into the book with as little foreknowledge as possible. A moment of uncontrolled anger sparks a chain of events that can’t be reversed sets the scene but that hardly tells you what you are heading into. Here we have time mixed up and all happening simultaneously. There’s a repeated quote (slight variations) that goes:
We have the voice and we have the time. We have all time.
And here we have fables and magical realism. We have poetry. We have a crime story.
It’s a book that requires a high level of concentration from the reader. Often the narrative will approach its point very tangentially and the reader can be forgiven for wondering why they are reading about something until, sometimes quite some time later, the penny drops. Although for this reader, and hence the plan to re-read, not all pennies dropped.
It’s remarkable, but I have the feeling I don’t appreciate how remarkable from just one reading.
November 4, 2021
Realismo mágico en un ambiente rural.
Breve y absolutamente cautivador.
Breve y absolutamente cautivador.
March 1, 2023
When a man in a suit comes and shows you some papers and tells you some stuff about mortgages and wants to take away your vegetable plot, your hens, your bitch and your fields, you defend yourself. Even if this man in a suit is your brother. And they can call you a revolutionary and talk about you on TV and in the papers and say who knows what about the oppressed peoples, or the last remaining guerrilla, but the truth is simpler, it's always simpler. And the truth is that you have to do what you have to do.
Of Saints and Miracles is Claire Wadie's translation of Manuel Astur's 2020 novel San, el libro de los milagros, and I suspect a strong contender for the 2023 International Booker Prize, with wonderful prose, in Wadie's translation,
Claire Wadie was (from this novel, a highly worthy) winner of the 2021 Peirene Stevns translation prize, generously endowed by Martha Stevns, for which previously unpublished translators submit a sample translation of a title chosen by Peirene Press. and the winning translation receives, inter alia, a commission to translate the book for publication by Peirene Press [see (1) below for more], this being the result.
The original, San, el libro de los milagros was in part inspired by the real-life story of Tomás Rodríguez Villar (Tomasín) from 2011, who having killed his brother in a remote Astuarian town, hid in the mountains until the Civil Guard arrested him 57 days later, becoming something of a Rambo-like folk hero in the process. Journalist Eduardo Lagar documented the story in Tomasín, en lugares salvajes..
The novel is based around on the Tomasínesque figure of Marcelino, an illiterate sheep farmer, and opens, in Wadie's powerful translation, with a biblical passage (2) with strong overtones of both Cain & Abel and Jacob & Esau, with Marcelino having struck and killed his brother, after the later tricked him in to signing some papers that gave away Marcelino's birthright, the modest family farm and herds, to settle his brother's debts. His brother tells him:
You’ve got no house, no meadows, no cows, no vegetable plot, nothing. It’s all gone. So start packing up your crap, and when they come, get the hell out.
To which, reflecting later on his actions Marcelino justifies his response as in the opening quote or passage (3) below.
The rest of the novel proceeds in a non-linear fashion, split into three 'songs' called «La matanza» (The Killing), «Los gusanos» (The Worms) and «El macho cabrío» (The He-Goat).
We both follow Marcelino's escapades but also his family history (his drunken, violent father and the abuse he suffered as a young boy at the hands of the local priest). But this is interspersed with the novel's highlight, a series of stories and legends from the area (often invented by the author), some down-to-earth (tales of local characters), others more fantastical (stories of the god Pan) and some in the uncanny valley in between (an plague of white worms which gives the second song its name, and which years later some vividly recall and others claim never happened).
From interviews (4) one of Astur's themes is timelessness - how generally we as 'modern' people look down on those from more 'traditional' or rustic backgrounds, how collectively we regard ourselves as superior to our ancestors, yet in reality we are no different to them and no different to our descendents to come (who will in turn, nevertheless, look down on us). Which is another theme that reoccurs in the text, particularly in the views of the chorus-like narrator who repeats variations on the refrain:
We have the voice and we have the time. We have all time. This is the moment.
Strongly recommended. 4.5 stars.
Footnotes
(1) The Peirene Stevns Translation Prize
This has so far resulted in the publication of three wonderful novels by Peirene Press:
2019: Snow, Dog, Foot translated by J Ockenden, published in 2020
2020: Nordic Fauna translated by John Litell, published in 2021
2021: Of Saints and Miracles translated by Claire Wadie, published in 2022
and the 2022 winner is James Young's who translation of O Amor dos Homens Avulsos will appear in 2023.
Passage (2)
Just as a sun-soaked stone radiates heat for a while after nightfall, there is a point on still summer evenings whe objects appear to shine, as if to give back part of the generous daylight they've received. In such moments, Marcelino would stop what he was doing — clod of earth on the hoe, spade sunk deep in the hay, scythe dripping with fresh green blood — to stand up straight, wipe his brow with the back of his hand and contemplate the valley below. Everything would be gleaming, chiming like a bell of golden light. He would let his eyes fill with sky.
And so, as the sun set on that July evening, Marcelino stopped and contemplated. The house, the stilt granary, the cart with its shaft reaching skyward, the dry straw, the ears of corn, the cows in a single spine coming home along the track, the dog’s bowl, the rusty drum among the nettles, the axe in the tree stump, the woodchips and the logs, the sawdust on the ground, even the moss that hugged the stones in the walls of the small vegetable plot, even the trees in the nearby woods and the mountain peaks: everything shimmered, silhouetted against the deep-blue sky, in which a single bright star heralded the coming of a new age. Everything, that is, except the large bloodstain in the sawdust, and his brother’s body, both so dark they seemed to trap the light, as if the black ink that was slowly flooding the valley was seeping directly from them, saturating the sky and drawing the shapes of bats, which began to dance around the yellowish light of Cobre’s lone street lamp.
The truth is, he never meant to hurt him.
Passage (3)
When you see a weed in the vegetable plot you pull it out. When you've got more chickens than you need, you wring the neck of one and chuck it in the pot. When some dog mounts your bitch and she gives birth to a litter, you choose the best puppy, put the rest in an old potato sack with some stones and throw the sack in the river. When an apple tree no longer bears fruit, you cut it down and chop it up for firewood. When the grass in your field gets too long, you cut it, gather it up and store it in the hayloft. When a man in a suit comes and shows you some papers and tells you some stuff about mortgages and wants to take away your vegetable plot, your hens, your bitch and your fields, you defend yourself. Even if this man in a suit is your brother. And they can call you a revolutionary and talk about you on TV and in the papers and say who knows what about the oppressed peoples, or the last remaining guerrilla, but the truth is simpler, it's always simpler. And the truth is that you have to do what you have to do. None of the rest matters, not one bit; after the winter comes another winter, after you cut the grass, you must cut it again, after the harvest, you must harvest countless more times, this year's snowfall will thaw and another will come in its place, this body will rot and other bodies will tread in its footsteps. You see, this wound hurts just as much as yesterday's wound, which hurt as much as the one before, and the one before the one before that, and as much as the first wound, the original wound that the first man feared. And though this wound is bleeding in the same way as all wounds bleed, and blood has always been the same, this wound thinks itself unique.
Interview (4)
- ¿Por qué, como afirma en la novela, es absurdo creerse mejor por el hecho de estar vivo?
-Porque haber nacido no tiene ningún mérito, del mismo modo que morir no demuestra nada. En línea con lo de antes, solemos convertir a los muertos, a nuestros antepasados, en personajes planos y simples, no como nosotros, que somos inteligentes y complejos. Pero la verdad es que ellos eran exactamente igual que nosotros. Aquellos que iban al Coliseo de Roma a ver cómo se mataban los gladiadores, aquellos campesinos que morían de peste, todos los que creían en hombres lobos, brujas y posesiones demoníacas, los que estaban seguros de que la Tierra era plana y los que cometieron todos los errores que llevaron a la guerra, todos eran exactamente igual que nosotros y tenían tantas dudas, certezas y temores como nosotros. También creían estar haciendo lo correcto. Nosotros seremos pasado dentro de nada.
Passage (5)
It is absurd to think yourself superior simply because you are alive. The arrogance of the present makes no sense whatsoever, You already existed thirty thousand years ago. Those cavemen and cavewomen dressed in animal hides, huddled around the fire, caked in mud and lice-ridden, were physically and mentally the same as you. The Mesopotamian farmer who at forty was the oldest in the settlement, and the priest who tended the eternal flame in the temple — neither was any different from your friends. The Egyptian pharaoh who had a colossal pyramid built, his very own space shuttle, which on his death would launch him into the stars to be united with his fellow gods — he could be your brother-in-law. The thousands of Romans, cheering excitedly as lions tore apart Christian virgins in the arena — they were all of us. And that torn-apart Christian virgin was our sister, and we the ones who later made a saint of her. Nothing, absolutely nothing, differentiates us from the millions of Germans who wor-shipped Hitler, or from the Russians who let communism get out of hand. Nothing distinguishes you from your grand-parents, who believed themselves superior too. You are your forebears in the Plaza de Oriente, mourning the death of Franco, and you are the liberals shouting 'Down with NATO'. You are, and you will be, the same: all convinced that you are unique and superior for the simple fact of being alive. You will be your children believing their own technological lies, and we will be our grandchildren frying our brains with drugs yet to be invented.
But let us continue. We have the voice and we have the time. We have all time. This is the moment.
English language interview published after I read the novel
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/every...
Of Saints and Miracles is Claire Wadie's translation of Manuel Astur's 2020 novel San, el libro de los milagros, and I suspect a strong contender for the 2023 International Booker Prize, with wonderful prose, in Wadie's translation,
Claire Wadie was (from this novel, a highly worthy) winner of the 2021 Peirene Stevns translation prize, generously endowed by Martha Stevns, for which previously unpublished translators submit a sample translation of a title chosen by Peirene Press. and the winning translation receives, inter alia, a commission to translate the book for publication by Peirene Press [see (1) below for more], this being the result.
The original, San, el libro de los milagros was in part inspired by the real-life story of Tomás Rodríguez Villar (Tomasín) from 2011, who having killed his brother in a remote Astuarian town, hid in the mountains until the Civil Guard arrested him 57 days later, becoming something of a Rambo-like folk hero in the process. Journalist Eduardo Lagar documented the story in Tomasín, en lugares salvajes..
The novel is based around on the Tomasínesque figure of Marcelino, an illiterate sheep farmer, and opens, in Wadie's powerful translation, with a biblical passage (2) with strong overtones of both Cain & Abel and Jacob & Esau, with Marcelino having struck and killed his brother, after the later tricked him in to signing some papers that gave away Marcelino's birthright, the modest family farm and herds, to settle his brother's debts. His brother tells him:
You’ve got no house, no meadows, no cows, no vegetable plot, nothing. It’s all gone. So start packing up your crap, and when they come, get the hell out.
To which, reflecting later on his actions Marcelino justifies his response as in the opening quote or passage (3) below.
The rest of the novel proceeds in a non-linear fashion, split into three 'songs' called «La matanza» (The Killing), «Los gusanos» (The Worms) and «El macho cabrío» (The He-Goat).
We both follow Marcelino's escapades but also his family history (his drunken, violent father and the abuse he suffered as a young boy at the hands of the local priest). But this is interspersed with the novel's highlight, a series of stories and legends from the area (often invented by the author), some down-to-earth (tales of local characters), others more fantastical (stories of the god Pan) and some in the uncanny valley in between (an plague of white worms which gives the second song its name, and which years later some vividly recall and others claim never happened).
From interviews (4) one of Astur's themes is timelessness - how generally we as 'modern' people look down on those from more 'traditional' or rustic backgrounds, how collectively we regard ourselves as superior to our ancestors, yet in reality we are no different to them and no different to our descendents to come (who will in turn, nevertheless, look down on us). Which is another theme that reoccurs in the text, particularly in the views of the chorus-like narrator who repeats variations on the refrain:
We have the voice and we have the time. We have all time. This is the moment.
Strongly recommended. 4.5 stars.
Footnotes
(1) The Peirene Stevns Translation Prize
Translation is the life blood of Peirene Press. We also think it is a necessary art form in the world we live in. Translation opens borders and enables us to travel across the world through words.
For new translators securing a first translation can be difficult. It can take years of dedicated hard work and half the battle is simply trying to convince a publisher – who tends to commission seasoned translators – to trust your work. This is where the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize comes in.
Open to all translators without a published novel, this prize not only looks to award great translation, it hopes to raise the profile of translated literature while offering a new translator the opportunity to see their work in print. This is the only translation prize that results in the publication of a full novel.
...
Martha Stevns grew up in the Swiss-German speaking part of Switzerland and studied German Literature and Linguistics. Her love of literature has always stayed with her, and reading in German, French and English has been and still is one of her great pleasures. Peirene’s aim of bringing literature from different cultures and languages to the English speaking world through translations of high quality writing fits right into Martha’s philosophy of appreciating and sharing the richness of different cultures.
This has so far resulted in the publication of three wonderful novels by Peirene Press:
2019: Snow, Dog, Foot translated by J Ockenden, published in 2020
2020: Nordic Fauna translated by John Litell, published in 2021
2021: Of Saints and Miracles translated by Claire Wadie, published in 2022
and the 2022 winner is James Young's who translation of O Amor dos Homens Avulsos will appear in 2023.
Passage (2)
Just as a sun-soaked stone radiates heat for a while after nightfall, there is a point on still summer evenings whe objects appear to shine, as if to give back part of the generous daylight they've received. In such moments, Marcelino would stop what he was doing — clod of earth on the hoe, spade sunk deep in the hay, scythe dripping with fresh green blood — to stand up straight, wipe his brow with the back of his hand and contemplate the valley below. Everything would be gleaming, chiming like a bell of golden light. He would let his eyes fill with sky.
And so, as the sun set on that July evening, Marcelino stopped and contemplated. The house, the stilt granary, the cart with its shaft reaching skyward, the dry straw, the ears of corn, the cows in a single spine coming home along the track, the dog’s bowl, the rusty drum among the nettles, the axe in the tree stump, the woodchips and the logs, the sawdust on the ground, even the moss that hugged the stones in the walls of the small vegetable plot, even the trees in the nearby woods and the mountain peaks: everything shimmered, silhouetted against the deep-blue sky, in which a single bright star heralded the coming of a new age. Everything, that is, except the large bloodstain in the sawdust, and his brother’s body, both so dark they seemed to trap the light, as if the black ink that was slowly flooding the valley was seeping directly from them, saturating the sky and drawing the shapes of bats, which began to dance around the yellowish light of Cobre’s lone street lamp.
The truth is, he never meant to hurt him.
Passage (3)
When you see a weed in the vegetable plot you pull it out. When you've got more chickens than you need, you wring the neck of one and chuck it in the pot. When some dog mounts your bitch and she gives birth to a litter, you choose the best puppy, put the rest in an old potato sack with some stones and throw the sack in the river. When an apple tree no longer bears fruit, you cut it down and chop it up for firewood. When the grass in your field gets too long, you cut it, gather it up and store it in the hayloft. When a man in a suit comes and shows you some papers and tells you some stuff about mortgages and wants to take away your vegetable plot, your hens, your bitch and your fields, you defend yourself. Even if this man in a suit is your brother. And they can call you a revolutionary and talk about you on TV and in the papers and say who knows what about the oppressed peoples, or the last remaining guerrilla, but the truth is simpler, it's always simpler. And the truth is that you have to do what you have to do. None of the rest matters, not one bit; after the winter comes another winter, after you cut the grass, you must cut it again, after the harvest, you must harvest countless more times, this year's snowfall will thaw and another will come in its place, this body will rot and other bodies will tread in its footsteps. You see, this wound hurts just as much as yesterday's wound, which hurt as much as the one before, and the one before the one before that, and as much as the first wound, the original wound that the first man feared. And though this wound is bleeding in the same way as all wounds bleed, and blood has always been the same, this wound thinks itself unique.
Interview (4)
- ¿Por qué, como afirma en la novela, es absurdo creerse mejor por el hecho de estar vivo?
-Porque haber nacido no tiene ningún mérito, del mismo modo que morir no demuestra nada. En línea con lo de antes, solemos convertir a los muertos, a nuestros antepasados, en personajes planos y simples, no como nosotros, que somos inteligentes y complejos. Pero la verdad es que ellos eran exactamente igual que nosotros. Aquellos que iban al Coliseo de Roma a ver cómo se mataban los gladiadores, aquellos campesinos que morían de peste, todos los que creían en hombres lobos, brujas y posesiones demoníacas, los que estaban seguros de que la Tierra era plana y los que cometieron todos los errores que llevaron a la guerra, todos eran exactamente igual que nosotros y tenían tantas dudas, certezas y temores como nosotros. También creían estar haciendo lo correcto. Nosotros seremos pasado dentro de nada.
Passage (5)
It is absurd to think yourself superior simply because you are alive. The arrogance of the present makes no sense whatsoever, You already existed thirty thousand years ago. Those cavemen and cavewomen dressed in animal hides, huddled around the fire, caked in mud and lice-ridden, were physically and mentally the same as you. The Mesopotamian farmer who at forty was the oldest in the settlement, and the priest who tended the eternal flame in the temple — neither was any different from your friends. The Egyptian pharaoh who had a colossal pyramid built, his very own space shuttle, which on his death would launch him into the stars to be united with his fellow gods — he could be your brother-in-law. The thousands of Romans, cheering excitedly as lions tore apart Christian virgins in the arena — they were all of us. And that torn-apart Christian virgin was our sister, and we the ones who later made a saint of her. Nothing, absolutely nothing, differentiates us from the millions of Germans who wor-shipped Hitler, or from the Russians who let communism get out of hand. Nothing distinguishes you from your grand-parents, who believed themselves superior too. You are your forebears in the Plaza de Oriente, mourning the death of Franco, and you are the liberals shouting 'Down with NATO'. You are, and you will be, the same: all convinced that you are unique and superior for the simple fact of being alive. You will be your children believing their own technological lies, and we will be our grandchildren frying our brains with drugs yet to be invented.
But let us continue. We have the voice and we have the time. We have all time. This is the moment.
English language interview published after I read the novel
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/every...
February 18, 2021
Una maravilla.
June 18, 2023
A will o'wisp of a story
Beautifully told. Marcelino's story is woven through the mists of time, mountains, rivers, stories, gossip and different perspectives. It's weave meets other threads, stories of other people, family, friends, neighbours, enemies, abusers and to keep hold of his thread you need to hang on. I sometimes grasped it in my hands and sometimes it just disappeared like a will o'wisp.
Astur shows how all our stories are cast into the great big cauldron of us on Earth and how the we is made up of the I's and the I is made up of the we.
Beautifully told. Marcelino's story is woven through the mists of time, mountains, rivers, stories, gossip and different perspectives. It's weave meets other threads, stories of other people, family, friends, neighbours, enemies, abusers and to keep hold of his thread you need to hang on. I sometimes grasped it in my hands and sometimes it just disappeared like a will o'wisp.
Astur shows how all our stories are cast into the great big cauldron of us on Earth and how the we is made up of the I's and the I is made up of the we.
March 17, 2020
Libro difícil de reseñar, será porque es un milagro.
Cuando España entró en estado de alarma y todo el mundo se lanzó a los supermercados, yo llamé a mi librera de cabecera y encargué este libro, que llegó el viernes. Justo a tiempo para recluirnos en casa. "Tenemos la voz y tenemos el tiempo. Tenemos todo el tiempo." Es un libro para ser leído con calma, para disfrutar del lenguaje y sus implicaciones. No es un libro para todo el mundo, afortunadamente. No querría verme encerrada en casa rodeada de best-sellers, me daría al bingo online.
Más que una novela es una urdimbre de historias, relatos populares y mitología en la que el hilo central puede que sea Marcelino, o quizás seamos nosotros. "Todos los hombres vuelven a ser monos asomados a sus cuevas sin nada más que hacer que temer y soñar. Y la actualidad se detiene."
Es precioso. Quedaos con eso.
Cuando España entró en estado de alarma y todo el mundo se lanzó a los supermercados, yo llamé a mi librera de cabecera y encargué este libro, que llegó el viernes. Justo a tiempo para recluirnos en casa. "Tenemos la voz y tenemos el tiempo. Tenemos todo el tiempo." Es un libro para ser leído con calma, para disfrutar del lenguaje y sus implicaciones. No es un libro para todo el mundo, afortunadamente. No querría verme encerrada en casa rodeada de best-sellers, me daría al bingo online.
Más que una novela es una urdimbre de historias, relatos populares y mitología en la que el hilo central puede que sea Marcelino, o quizás seamos nosotros. "Todos los hombres vuelven a ser monos asomados a sus cuevas sin nada más que hacer que temer y soñar. Y la actualidad se detiene."
Es precioso. Quedaos con eso.
November 5, 2022
4,5 - I use the term 'little gem' too often, but this is definitely one. A beautiful, lyrical work blending crime with the mystical surroundings of the isolated valleys of the Picos de Europa mountains in Northern Spain.
It is the story of Marcelino, a simple farmer (some even say retarded) who ostensibly has killed his brother in a dispute over land, but does he realise what he has done? And why doesn't the police seem to be able to catch him?
The book is as much about the chase as it is about the people, myths and beliefs of the village, where the young people have left for the city and a dwindling and ageing population remains. Gradually the context overtakes the plot, but by then the reader is fully invested in the story and ready to learn more about the region and its people.
The author is apparently a poet first and a novelist second and he manages to balance the two perfectly. It is beautifully translated as well. It reminded me very much of the beautiful When I Sing, the Mountains Dance by Irene Solà, which is set in Catalonia (this one in Asturias). Also Jesus Carrasco comes to mind.
Highly recommended!
It is the story of Marcelino, a simple farmer (some even say retarded) who ostensibly has killed his brother in a dispute over land, but does he realise what he has done? And why doesn't the police seem to be able to catch him?
The book is as much about the chase as it is about the people, myths and beliefs of the village, where the young people have left for the city and a dwindling and ageing population remains. Gradually the context overtakes the plot, but by then the reader is fully invested in the story and ready to learn more about the region and its people.
The author is apparently a poet first and a novelist second and he manages to balance the two perfectly. It is beautifully translated as well. It reminded me very much of the beautiful When I Sing, the Mountains Dance by Irene Solà, which is set in Catalonia (this one in Asturias). Also Jesus Carrasco comes to mind.
Highly recommended!
January 16, 2023
I'm not sure if it is the same for most readers out there but I need a good ten pages or so before I can settle down with a book and then if I can't for about 50 pages then it's a DNF. With Of Saints and Miracles though, I was drawn in from the first sentence and I had a gut feeling that I would enjoy the novel.
I was right
The plot is simple. Marcelino kills his brother and escapes into the forests of northern Spain. This premise allows Astur to play around with the plot and he does. In fact the book starts to splinter like a kaleidoscope and different plotlines lines start to weave into the narrative. There are glimpses of Marcelino's youth and relationship with his brother and father, some of the experiences he went through when young. There are passages about the villagers who grew up among Marcelino, nursery rhymes, plagues of biblical proportions and sections devoted to the natural world.
Of Saints and Miracles is, at times, many things. The passages on nature are beautiful, the ones about Marcellino's life are disturbing and make uncomfortable reading, and yet there is a lot of quotes and one liners that just strike the reader, this is a highly quotable novel with philosophical undertones. Kudos to the translator for managing this seamless, organic translation and bringing out the thought processes of the characters.
Although this is a word I have used a lot, Of Saints and Miracles is a unique book; the structure crams a lot but it's a readable novel and a full picture of Marcelino's character does emerge by the novel's conclusion and it makes one think that there isn't really a sharp distinction between the natural world and human nature - both an act savagely in their own right. I will say that there is nothing like this novel and I doubt anyone can match it. Do read it.
I was right
The plot is simple. Marcelino kills his brother and escapes into the forests of northern Spain. This premise allows Astur to play around with the plot and he does. In fact the book starts to splinter like a kaleidoscope and different plotlines lines start to weave into the narrative. There are glimpses of Marcelino's youth and relationship with his brother and father, some of the experiences he went through when young. There are passages about the villagers who grew up among Marcelino, nursery rhymes, plagues of biblical proportions and sections devoted to the natural world.
Of Saints and Miracles is, at times, many things. The passages on nature are beautiful, the ones about Marcellino's life are disturbing and make uncomfortable reading, and yet there is a lot of quotes and one liners that just strike the reader, this is a highly quotable novel with philosophical undertones. Kudos to the translator for managing this seamless, organic translation and bringing out the thought processes of the characters.
Although this is a word I have used a lot, Of Saints and Miracles is a unique book; the structure crams a lot but it's a readable novel and a full picture of Marcelino's character does emerge by the novel's conclusion and it makes one think that there isn't really a sharp distinction between the natural world and human nature - both an act savagely in their own right. I will say that there is nothing like this novel and I doubt anyone can match it. Do read it.
July 27, 2020
No tengo ni idea de lo que he leído. Sólo sé que es una maravilla.
June 9, 2022
Miracle in Asturias
Review of the Peirene Press paperback edition (expected publication July 6, 2022) translated by Claire Wadie from the Spanish language original San, el libro de los milagros (Saint, The Book of Miracles) (2020)
Of Saints and Miracles is a beautifully written and translated novel which evokes positive comparisons to Gabriel García Márquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) and to Jon McGregor's Reservoir 13 (2017) to cite one classic and one recent example of books centred around rural communities. All of these novels involve an overt death or, in the case of Reservoir 13, a disappearance & presumed death. The stronger comparison is in the way all three novels tell tales of the associated local community, delving into both past and future lives and into the nature and even the mythology of their worlds.
Astur's tale is the story of Marcelino, a simple farmer, who in a moment of spontaneous rage, kills his wayward younger brother who had returned home to their rural community of Cobre, in the province of Asturias in Northern Spain, in order to swindle the family farm from his sibling. That isn't a spoiler as you learn that story on the second page of the book.
The killing sets off a picaresque journey across the lands and forests with a somewhat hapless group of police authorities who are unable to capture the suspect, who becomes revered as a Robin-Hood-like hero to his community who directly or indirectly assist him in his evasions. The tale regularly diverts from that escape to fill in the background of Marcelino's own family and of many of the locals, going back into both history and local mythology. There is perhaps even a magic realist encounter with forest nymphs, or you can read it as persons from actual real life if you wish, to increase the associations with Marquez, although the latter's Chronicle... is in his journalistic style, and not one of magic realism.
This book is already one of my favourite reads of 2022, and I suspect it will be a strong candidate for literary prizes related to translation in the upcoming year. Translator Claire Wadie is already the winner of the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize of 2021 and this is her first full length literary translation.
Author Manuel Astur. Image sourced from an interview at El Comercio.
Cover image of the original Spanish language edition. Image sourced from the publisher Acantilado.
I read Of Saints and Miracles in advance of its official publication date of July 6, 2022 due to my subscription to Peirene Press. Subscribers receive the publisher's books several weeks ahead of their official release date.
Of Saints and Miracles was also the May 2022 selection from the Republic of Consciousness Book of the Month (BotM) club. Subscriptions to the BotM support the annual Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent publishers. I already know which book I am rooting for in the 2023 RoC Prize Competition.
Trivia and Links
Peirene Press will likely have a book launch in the next several weeks for Of Saints and Miracles and you can watch for that at their News and Events Page here. The Page currently (early June 2022) leads with an excerpt from the book.
Spanish language author interview in El Comercio, with Leticia Sánchez Ruiz (27/04/2020)
Spanish language author interview in El Confidencial, with Juan Soto Ivars (26/05/2020)
Spanish language author interview in Fusión Asturias, with Marta Malde (22/05/2020)
Spanish language author video interview in Pagino Dos, with Óscar López (16/06/2020)
Spanish language author interview in El Asombrario, by Luis Reguero (02/09/2020)
Spanish language author interview in Pliego Suelto, by Laeticia Rovecchio Antón (21/11/2020)
Spanish language interview in La Razón, by Concha García (19/12/2020)
Review of the Peirene Press paperback edition (expected publication July 6, 2022) translated by Claire Wadie from the Spanish language original San, el libro de los milagros (Saint, The Book of Miracles) (2020)
Of Saints and Miracles is a beautifully written and translated novel which evokes positive comparisons to Gabriel García Márquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) and to Jon McGregor's Reservoir 13 (2017) to cite one classic and one recent example of books centred around rural communities. All of these novels involve an overt death or, in the case of Reservoir 13, a disappearance & presumed death. The stronger comparison is in the way all three novels tell tales of the associated local community, delving into both past and future lives and into the nature and even the mythology of their worlds.
Astur's tale is the story of Marcelino, a simple farmer, who in a moment of spontaneous rage, kills his wayward younger brother who had returned home to their rural community of Cobre, in the province of Asturias in Northern Spain, in order to swindle the family farm from his sibling. That isn't a spoiler as you learn that story on the second page of the book.
And so, as the sun set on that July evening, Marcelino stopped and contemplated. The house, the stilt granary, the cart with its shaft reaching skyward, the dry straw, the ears of corn, the cows in a single spine coming home along the track, the dog’s bowl, the rusty drum among the nettles, the axe in the tree stump, the woodchips and the logs, the sawdust on the ground, even the moss that hugged the stones in the walls of the small vegetable plot, even the trees in the nearby woods and the mountain peaks: everything shimmered, silhouetted against the deep-blue sky, in which a single bright star heralded the coming of a new age. Everything, that is, except the large bloodstain in the sawdust, and his brother’s body, both so dark they seemed to trap the light, as if the black ink that was slowly flooding the valley was seeping directly from them, saturating the sky and drawing the shapes of bats, which began to dance around the yellowish light of Cobre’s lone street lamp.
The truth is, he never meant to hurt him. - excerpt from Of Saints and Miracles
The killing sets off a picaresque journey across the lands and forests with a somewhat hapless group of police authorities who are unable to capture the suspect, who becomes revered as a Robin-Hood-like hero to his community who directly or indirectly assist him in his evasions. The tale regularly diverts from that escape to fill in the background of Marcelino's own family and of many of the locals, going back into both history and local mythology. There is perhaps even a magic realist encounter with forest nymphs, or you can read it as persons from actual real life if you wish, to increase the associations with Marquez, although the latter's Chronicle... is in his journalistic style, and not one of magic realism.
This book is already one of my favourite reads of 2022, and I suspect it will be a strong candidate for literary prizes related to translation in the upcoming year. Translator Claire Wadie is already the winner of the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize of 2021 and this is her first full length literary translation.
Author Manuel Astur. Image sourced from an interview at El Comercio.
Cover image of the original Spanish language edition. Image sourced from the publisher Acantilado.
I read Of Saints and Miracles in advance of its official publication date of July 6, 2022 due to my subscription to Peirene Press. Subscribers receive the publisher's books several weeks ahead of their official release date.
Of Saints and Miracles was also the May 2022 selection from the Republic of Consciousness Book of the Month (BotM) club. Subscriptions to the BotM support the annual Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent publishers. I already know which book I am rooting for in the 2023 RoC Prize Competition.
Trivia and Links
Peirene Press will likely have a book launch in the next several weeks for Of Saints and Miracles and you can watch for that at their News and Events Page here. The Page currently (early June 2022) leads with an excerpt from the book.
Spanish language author interview in El Comercio, with Leticia Sánchez Ruiz (27/04/2020)
Spanish language author interview in El Confidencial, with Juan Soto Ivars (26/05/2020)
Spanish language author interview in Fusión Asturias, with Marta Malde (22/05/2020)
Spanish language author video interview in Pagino Dos, with Óscar López (16/06/2020)
Spanish language author interview in El Asombrario, by Luis Reguero (02/09/2020)
Spanish language author interview in Pliego Suelto, by Laeticia Rovecchio Antón (21/11/2020)
Spanish language interview in La Razón, by Concha García (19/12/2020)
September 15, 2022
This novel has joined the pantheon of my personal favorites-of-all-time. Translated from Spanish, it is set in the mountains of northern Spain. Although it reads like a story out of time, from ancient centuries past, it takes place here & now in the 21st century.
This is the story of a man named Marcelino who lives alone in his family home with the cows and the chickens on the outskirts of a tiny hamlet, Cobre; "perched almost at the mountain's summit, like a kite surveying its territory, consists of just three houses, two of which are abandoned, their roofs sunken like saggy old cushions." From childhood, Marcelino was the village idiot, the older son of a violent drunk Manuel and a kind magical woman Olegaria, and the loving protector of his younger brother. Over the course of the story, village gossip and news outlets with not enough to do and people seeking miracles transform Marcelino first into a wanted criminal, and then to a folklore legend, and finally into a saint. "[E]ach person is a simple little song that, though easily forgotten, has a beautiful refrain."
Woven throughout Marcelino's story are the legends and myths and gossip and transformed memories of his community. There is the story of the birth of the world, of the Sun & the Oak, the River & the Moon, the Girl & the He-Goat, and of knowledge of sadness and fear and love. There is the story of the worms that appeared on the roads in August 1985 and disappeared in September. There are stories of the festivals attended by all of the villagers and the day the electric street lights arrived. There is the story of the storyteller. "[S]tories are the voice of the spirits, and because of this they are eternal and can't just be made up."
Set against Marcelino's story is the story of all the world, and the tiny-ness of each person in it -- the smallest of people and their smallest moments sit in contrast to the most momentous of world events. None of us are the first, and we are unlikely to be the last, and so we are perhaps insignificant except in our own minds. And yet:
"The past is village folklore, a fairy tale rewritten every day to get us through the winter, and to help us imagine a vast world beyond the valley. And the future is a promise in whose name we deny ourselves the one true paradise: this very moment we are navigating, as if on a floating island; this time in which we are living. Here, hovering a few inches above the ground -- this is our kingdom. We are safe here. You see, it doesn't take more than that. This is the moment. It is all moments. We have the voice and we have the time."
This is the story of a man named Marcelino who lives alone in his family home with the cows and the chickens on the outskirts of a tiny hamlet, Cobre; "perched almost at the mountain's summit, like a kite surveying its territory, consists of just three houses, two of which are abandoned, their roofs sunken like saggy old cushions." From childhood, Marcelino was the village idiot, the older son of a violent drunk Manuel and a kind magical woman Olegaria, and the loving protector of his younger brother. Over the course of the story, village gossip and news outlets with not enough to do and people seeking miracles transform Marcelino first into a wanted criminal, and then to a folklore legend, and finally into a saint. "[E]ach person is a simple little song that, though easily forgotten, has a beautiful refrain."
Woven throughout Marcelino's story are the legends and myths and gossip and transformed memories of his community. There is the story of the birth of the world, of the Sun & the Oak, the River & the Moon, the Girl & the He-Goat, and of knowledge of sadness and fear and love. There is the story of the worms that appeared on the roads in August 1985 and disappeared in September. There are stories of the festivals attended by all of the villagers and the day the electric street lights arrived. There is the story of the storyteller. "[S]tories are the voice of the spirits, and because of this they are eternal and can't just be made up."
Set against Marcelino's story is the story of all the world, and the tiny-ness of each person in it -- the smallest of people and their smallest moments sit in contrast to the most momentous of world events. None of us are the first, and we are unlikely to be the last, and so we are perhaps insignificant except in our own minds. And yet:
"The past is village folklore, a fairy tale rewritten every day to get us through the winter, and to help us imagine a vast world beyond the valley. And the future is a promise in whose name we deny ourselves the one true paradise: this very moment we are navigating, as if on a floating island; this time in which we are living. Here, hovering a few inches above the ground -- this is our kingdom. We are safe here. You see, it doesn't take more than that. This is the moment. It is all moments. We have the voice and we have the time."
June 13, 2021
Librón (James)
August 1, 2021
Este debe de ser uno de esos libros que, no importa lo que te cuenten sobre él, casi seguro te va a pillar por sorpresa. No sé si tanto por lo que cuenta o por cómo lo hace, o por una personalísima combinación de ambas cosas. Su brevedad refuerza esa impresión que te queda al final como de ráfaga, de qué-ha-pasado-aquí. Mejor no digo nada más y que San siga tomando desprevenidos a más lectores y lectoras. De todos modos, tampoco podría decir mucho más, aún sigo un poco pasmada.
August 20, 2024
Set against the wild mountainous landscape of the Montes de León in north-west Spain this is a remarkable melodic blend of crime, fable and rural life that marks a significant achievement by author and translator alike. It is the first book published by the rebranded Pereine publisher, as New Vessel Press, and sets the highest of standards. It also won the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize for 2022 for Claire Wadie.
Just outside a remote mountain village in the Asturias lives Marcelino, 'small, insignificant, and pig-headed', yet he is destined to be the book's hero. We know from the outset that Marcelino has accidentally killed his older brother, who he admired as a boy. Devastated, Marcelino panics and takes off into the hills, persued by the authorities. Steadily, his past years of abuse and violence begin to unravel, both to us as the book proceeds and to the country as news media turns him into a national cult hero.
In the telling of this quite unique story Astur creates an atmosphere that grips tightly hold of its reader. His insertion to the narrative of snippets describing the characters of the village, and their lives, whether mundane or eccentric, works particularly well.
Wadie's translation captures Marcelino's increasingly weary voice; both weary of being on the run, and weary of the world as well. She creates a vibrancy and lyricism that form a wave upon which we are swept along, so much so, that between them, Wadie and Astur, they offer us a new perspective from which to see the world - whether fact or fiction, whether alive or long gone, whether we like it or not, ultimately everything is a story.
Just outside a remote mountain village in the Asturias lives Marcelino, 'small, insignificant, and pig-headed', yet he is destined to be the book's hero. We know from the outset that Marcelino has accidentally killed his older brother, who he admired as a boy. Devastated, Marcelino panics and takes off into the hills, persued by the authorities. Steadily, his past years of abuse and violence begin to unravel, both to us as the book proceeds and to the country as news media turns him into a national cult hero.
In the telling of this quite unique story Astur creates an atmosphere that grips tightly hold of its reader. His insertion to the narrative of snippets describing the characters of the village, and their lives, whether mundane or eccentric, works particularly well.
Wadie's translation captures Marcelino's increasingly weary voice; both weary of being on the run, and weary of the world as well. She creates a vibrancy and lyricism that form a wave upon which we are swept along, so much so, that between them, Wadie and Astur, they offer us a new perspective from which to see the world - whether fact or fiction, whether alive or long gone, whether we like it or not, ultimately everything is a story.
April 9, 2022
you are, and you will be, the same: all convinced that you are unique and superior for the simple fact of being alive. you will be your children believing their own technological lies, and we will be our grandchildren frying our brains with drugs yet to be invented.an often exquisite tale teeming with imagination, atmospherics, and wonder, manuel astur's of saints and miracles (san, el libro de los milagros) blends fantasy, fabulism, and fratricide. the first of the spanish author/poet/journalist/professor's books to be appear in english, of saints and miracles stirs, undulates, startles, educes, charms, and utterly envelops. like a handful of rich, fertile soil, astur's novel swells with symbiotic forms, playfully and powerfully intermixing narrative and character, past and present, thought and feeling, light and dark, the earthen and the ethereal, both the prosaic and the profound.
of saints and miracles is so many things at once (but is perhaps best enjoyed without knowing too much in advance). dreamlike in its tangentiality, astur's storytelling seems to spring from a buoyant melancholy or even a reverie still rooted in our regretful reality. it is winsome, it is wonderful, and, best of all, it is refreshingly unlike anything else you've recently read.
at the start of this journey, you were convinced they were the savages and you were the glorious colonizers civilizing the world. but over time, once the shine had worn off, you slowly came to the sad realization that in fact the savages were you, and that you'd sold off the land of your forebears in return for a couple of mirrors, some cheap plastic stuff, and a few electronic devices.
*translated from the spanish by claire wadie
4.5 stars
May 4, 2020
«De todos los fenómenos meteorológicos la lluvia es el que más sensación de continuidad produce. Es algo parecido a cuando descubrimos las primeras margaritas y, sin saber cómo, el cielo vuelve a estar lleno de vencejos. Cuando llueve parece que nunca haya dejado de hacerlo. Se olvidan los días intermedios, se olvida el sol, se olvida el calor: la lluvia es un monólogo que repite lo mismo desde hace miles de años. Por eso cuatro días de lluvia parecen eternos y cuando sale el sol los habitantes del norte tienen ese aspecto de secuestrados que acaban de ser liberados. Ésta es la razón de que los turistas se lo tomen tan mal cuando llueve, porque bajo la lluvia no pueden desprenderse de su pasado: la lluvia es el pasado; la lluvia es la familia que te obliga a volver a casa; la lluvia es nuestra infancia triste.»
June 21, 2022
Honestly, I struggled a bit with this book. It jumps around in time and place and I found some portions held my interest more than others. There’s also some slight mystical elements which were interesting but I’m not entirely sure if it was necessary to the story. I don’t really think I’m the ideal audience for this book. Overall, the prose is beautiful but the book didn’t capture my attention as much as I hoped it would.
May 19, 2021
Una pequeña novela rural, realmente mágica.
El libro va combinando la historia de Marcelino, ese pobre Lino y su huida después de un crimen, con el pasado, el presente, con leyendas del pueblo Asturiano, con la España vaciada, con hórreos, con el bosque, con poesía, con música... no sé, pero Astur crea una atmósfera, que enamora.
Es un libro especial, de esos que hay que tener en físico, porque lo merece. Recomiendo totalmente, me ha gustado mucho.
"Se tumbó y lloró esperando que la oscuridad se derritiera como un chocolate espeso, formara un charco negro y se filtrara por las grietas del suelo."
"Era un oso que vino y se comió al hombre que se bebió el agua que apagó el fuego que quemó el palo que mató al perro que se comió al gato que se comió al ratón que se comió el queso que sólo tenían para comer la vieja y el viejo."
El libro va combinando la historia de Marcelino, ese pobre Lino y su huida después de un crimen, con el pasado, el presente, con leyendas del pueblo Asturiano, con la España vaciada, con hórreos, con el bosque, con poesía, con música... no sé, pero Astur crea una atmósfera, que enamora.
Es un libro especial, de esos que hay que tener en físico, porque lo merece. Recomiendo totalmente, me ha gustado mucho.
"Se tumbó y lloró esperando que la oscuridad se derritiera como un chocolate espeso, formara un charco negro y se filtrara por las grietas del suelo."
"Era un oso que vino y se comió al hombre que se bebió el agua que apagó el fuego que quemó el palo que mató al perro que se comió al gato que se comió al ratón que se comió el queso que sólo tenían para comer la vieja y el viejo."
March 13, 2021
De lo mejor que leí en tiempo. Lo rural norteño envuelto en realismo mágico y fábula. Y eso que no me llena mucho el realismo mágico pero la forma de narrar ensamblando historias como ese hórreo sin necesidad de clavos, me fascinó. Muy recomendable.
August 1, 2022
WARNING: This book includes a number of scenes of terrible animal cruelty.
The prose is beautiful but the story I found a bit too meandering. The cruelty troubled me deeply. By the end I was eager to be done with it.
The prose is beautiful but the story I found a bit too meandering. The cruelty troubled me deeply. By the end I was eager to be done with it.
February 22, 2023
WOW! WOW! WOW!
May 9, 2025
Su padre gruñendo, maldiciendo e insultando. Su aliento cálido y pestilente de alcohólico con las tripas podridas. Sus grande manos, con sus gruesos dedos teñidos por el humo de tantos cigarros negros, que había fumado esperando la también negra muerte. Su barriga hinchada y su nariz roja. Su padre golpeando al hijo tonto hasta que brotaba la sangre. Y, luego, su padre gimiendo, en el cuarto de al lado, cuando, después de pegarle, montaba a su madre. Su hermano acariciándole la cara, sin comprender nada y sin sospechar siquiera que, cuando su padre muriera, la noche que tenía dentro entraría también en su alma.
May 8, 2020
3,5
Termino la lectura y la estructura de este libro sigue girando en mi cabeza. ¿Tenemos una trama que seguir? Ciertamente sí, la hay, sin embargo, en ningún caso diría que es una trama al uso. Definiría la obra como una construcción de la misma a base de fragmentos a encajar cual si de un puzle se tratara. Pero, ¿realmente terminan encajando? No estoy tan seguro de eso, pero viendo el resultado, no creo que eso importe demasiado.
En San, el libro de los milagros nos encontramos con la historia de Lino, una historia que a ratos aparece y desaparece, quedándose por momentos oculta entre capas de onirismo y de recuerdo, de nostalgia y de memoria. Lino pertenece a ese otro mundo en el que los supuestamente cuerdos colocan a los que no son como ellos. Y el pasado de Lino es espeluznante, tanto como para encogerte el corazón, pero contado muy acertadamente prescindiendo del sentimentalismo fácil. Envuelven a la historia el naturalismo y la pobreza en un primer plano con la siempre presente lucha de clases pululando tras el cortinaje.
Astur nos hace entrega, en poco más de 160 páginas, de un delicioso cóctel elaborado con diversos ingredientes. A saber: un sobrecogedor drama en un entorno rural de esa llamada España vacía, unas onzas de realismo mágico e incluso algunas gotas de noir. Todo ello bien agitado y servido en una copa de cristal de memoria conforman esta original y diferente novela que se lee en un tris. Y solo por la originalidad de la propuesta, por conseguir sacarnos por un momento de nuestras estructuras más clásicas y por su innegable musicalidad, ya merece la pena leerla.
"También os conocemos a vosotros, los que os fuisteis. Y como os gustaba volver al pueblo de vez en cuando para ver a los que se habían quedado. Estaban gordos, envejecidos y embrutecidos, con varios hijos a cuestas que no les dejaban ni un segundo de paz. Era vuestra victoria. Vuestra confirmación de que habíais hecho bien yéndoos a la ciudad en cuanto pudisteis, para no volver más, con la excusa de estudiar cualquier cosa. la prueba de que habíais progresado. Vosotros, simples hijos de ganaderos y campesinos, habíais llegado alto. Escribíais en revistas digitales, ibais a bares de moda, teníais mil novios y novias y aventuras de una noche. Erais creativos, libres irónicos y muy modernos. Erais seres superiores. Aunque no llegarais a fin de mes, pues nadie os pagaba por vuestro genial trabajo. Aunque tuvierais una depresión constante, ninguna relación sentimental os durara más de unos meses y os sintierais tremendamente solos en vuestras diminutas habitaciones en pisos compartidos o en vuestros apartamentos minúsculos con vistas a un feo patio de luces y a un futuro decepcionante. Cuando comenzó este viaje, estabais convencidos de que los salvajes eran ellos, y los colonos gloriosos que expanden la civilización, vosotros. Pero con el tiempo, una vez pasó el deslumbramiento inicial, comenzasteis a comprender con dolor que los salvajes erais vosotros, y que habíais vendido la tierra de vuestros antepasados a cambio de unos cuantos espejos, un puñado de chucherías de plástico y algo de tecnología.
Aun así, oso paseabais con vuestra ropa bonita y moderna por el pueblo y dejabais que os admiraran como a los antiguos indianos. Cuando os preguntaban a qué os dedicabais, dudabais, como si hablaran otro idioma y en el suyo no existiera expresión adecuada para vuestra profesión, y terminabais diciendo alguna palabra inglesa, técnica o inventada para dejarlos con la boca abierta."
Termino la lectura y la estructura de este libro sigue girando en mi cabeza. ¿Tenemos una trama que seguir? Ciertamente sí, la hay, sin embargo, en ningún caso diría que es una trama al uso. Definiría la obra como una construcción de la misma a base de fragmentos a encajar cual si de un puzle se tratara. Pero, ¿realmente terminan encajando? No estoy tan seguro de eso, pero viendo el resultado, no creo que eso importe demasiado.
En San, el libro de los milagros nos encontramos con la historia de Lino, una historia que a ratos aparece y desaparece, quedándose por momentos oculta entre capas de onirismo y de recuerdo, de nostalgia y de memoria. Lino pertenece a ese otro mundo en el que los supuestamente cuerdos colocan a los que no son como ellos. Y el pasado de Lino es espeluznante, tanto como para encogerte el corazón, pero contado muy acertadamente prescindiendo del sentimentalismo fácil. Envuelven a la historia el naturalismo y la pobreza en un primer plano con la siempre presente lucha de clases pululando tras el cortinaje.
Astur nos hace entrega, en poco más de 160 páginas, de un delicioso cóctel elaborado con diversos ingredientes. A saber: un sobrecogedor drama en un entorno rural de esa llamada España vacía, unas onzas de realismo mágico e incluso algunas gotas de noir. Todo ello bien agitado y servido en una copa de cristal de memoria conforman esta original y diferente novela que se lee en un tris. Y solo por la originalidad de la propuesta, por conseguir sacarnos por un momento de nuestras estructuras más clásicas y por su innegable musicalidad, ya merece la pena leerla.
"También os conocemos a vosotros, los que os fuisteis. Y como os gustaba volver al pueblo de vez en cuando para ver a los que se habían quedado. Estaban gordos, envejecidos y embrutecidos, con varios hijos a cuestas que no les dejaban ni un segundo de paz. Era vuestra victoria. Vuestra confirmación de que habíais hecho bien yéndoos a la ciudad en cuanto pudisteis, para no volver más, con la excusa de estudiar cualquier cosa. la prueba de que habíais progresado. Vosotros, simples hijos de ganaderos y campesinos, habíais llegado alto. Escribíais en revistas digitales, ibais a bares de moda, teníais mil novios y novias y aventuras de una noche. Erais creativos, libres irónicos y muy modernos. Erais seres superiores. Aunque no llegarais a fin de mes, pues nadie os pagaba por vuestro genial trabajo. Aunque tuvierais una depresión constante, ninguna relación sentimental os durara más de unos meses y os sintierais tremendamente solos en vuestras diminutas habitaciones en pisos compartidos o en vuestros apartamentos minúsculos con vistas a un feo patio de luces y a un futuro decepcionante. Cuando comenzó este viaje, estabais convencidos de que los salvajes eran ellos, y los colonos gloriosos que expanden la civilización, vosotros. Pero con el tiempo, una vez pasó el deslumbramiento inicial, comenzasteis a comprender con dolor que los salvajes erais vosotros, y que habíais vendido la tierra de vuestros antepasados a cambio de unos cuantos espejos, un puñado de chucherías de plástico y algo de tecnología.
Aun así, oso paseabais con vuestra ropa bonita y moderna por el pueblo y dejabais que os admiraran como a los antiguos indianos. Cuando os preguntaban a qué os dedicabais, dudabais, como si hablaran otro idioma y en el suyo no existiera expresión adecuada para vuestra profesión, y terminabais diciendo alguna palabra inglesa, técnica o inventada para dejarlos con la boca abierta."
July 18, 2023
Did you ever revise your opinion of a book as you were writing the review? I did in this case and I bumped it up from a 4 (for the story) to a 5 because it is loaded with ‘Deep Philosophical Thoughts’ that I had marked to quote.
It’s simple story that we know at the outset from the blurbs. Marcelino, a mentally challenged man is living a life of rural self-sufficiency. He tends a cow, pigs and chickens on his deceased parents’ small plot of land in the province of Asturias in northern Spain. His good-for-nothing younger alcoholic brother tricks him into selling the land and runs off with the money. They get in a fight, he kills his brother, and Marcelino goes on the run.
So this story is an interesting blend of almost 19th-century rural hand-to-mouth poverty mixed in with cell phones and TV.
There's a single repetitive philosophical theme woven into the story. We are one, good and evil. We do this to each other. It's been done before and we've been doing this to each other since we were cavemen. And we’ll keep doing it. Some examples:
“You see, this wound hurts just as much as yesterday’s wound, which hurt as much as the one before, and the one before the one before that, and as much as the first wound, the original wound that the first man feared. And though this wound is bleeding in the same way as all wounds bleed, and blood has always been the same, this wound thinks itself unique.”
“But there are always women, resisting, holding on, slowly chewing over their grief, bidding farewell to the dying, watching over the dead, dressing even the biggest coward in his hero’s shroud. Because a woman watches over a dying man knowing, like all women, that the real miracle is the giving of life, and so understands that it should end simply, without any fuss."
"Death is never heroic. Life can be, but not death. Death comes to us all, but we know that if a woman watches over us on our deathbed, we’ll go to heaven."
"Woman does not weep for the warrior; she weeps for the child who was born and who always leaves this world too soon.”
“All the dead are good because they are no longer alive and can therefore be imagined. As with fools and saints, we can lie about them because they can't defend themselves. They are a tale with countless morals, in illustration of whatever you like, a myth to be molded. The dead don't belong to the dead; the dead are ours.”
Back to the story. An elderly woman who might be a witch is interviewed on television about Marcelino. In her ramblings she mentions that he might be a saint. When she sees herself on television saying that, she starts to truly believe it. Social media help make him a cult figure standing against the capitalist theft of his farmland by his finagling brother.
Marcelino hides out in the woods living in caves, skeletons of cars and abandoned houses, eluding the police. The local cathedral is already a pilgrimage site then someone posts a sign to the ‘saints house.’ People start arriving and taking away pieces of the property as sacred relics. Previously people in town had called him Marcelino the Nobody.
Local stories from the war are interspersed. So many wars. At times the stories seem to refer to WW II and at other times to the Spanish Civil War. And speaking of wars, the survivalist portion of the story reminds me of The Twilight World by Werner Herzog, the story of Onoda, the Japanese man who hid in isolation for 29 years on a Pacific island after WW II.
In this rural culture there's a lot about witches, evil spells and goblins. The story is also interspersed with folk tales and fables.
I liked Marcelino and I found myself rooting for him as he eluded the police. As a boy he had doted on his younger brother and he had protected him and his mother from his father’s drunken rages.
The entire story is told in short punchy sentences. Here’s when Leno (Marcelino) is taken by his mother to his grandmother’s house, where his mother grew up.
“Leno's mother told him to give the little old lady a kiss. She smelled of cookies, earth, and bleach. Then she gave a toothless smile like a baby magpie and made a gurgling sound as if she had sand in her throat. She gurgled some more and his mother understood, even if he didn't. That was about all he could remember of the old world. The yellow smell of human piss and past lives filled with misery. A white washbowl with a tear shaped chip in its enamel, glowing in the darkness like an apparition. A one-eyed ginger cat asleep at the old woman's feet. A tatty old oil cloth on a rickety table. A few empty hooks, blackened by grease over the years. A handful of dried ears of corn tied up in a piece of cloth. Shadows dancing on the filthy wall. That's about it.”
The author (b. 1980) is one of only about 100,000 people who still use the Asturian language and one of the few who write in it. He mostly writes poetry and this book appears to be his only one translated into English.
[Revised and map added 7/18/23]
Top photo taken in Asturias from wallpaperflare.com
Map from ontheworldmap.com
The author from lit-across-frontiers.org
It’s simple story that we know at the outset from the blurbs. Marcelino, a mentally challenged man is living a life of rural self-sufficiency. He tends a cow, pigs and chickens on his deceased parents’ small plot of land in the province of Asturias in northern Spain. His good-for-nothing younger alcoholic brother tricks him into selling the land and runs off with the money. They get in a fight, he kills his brother, and Marcelino goes on the run.
So this story is an interesting blend of almost 19th-century rural hand-to-mouth poverty mixed in with cell phones and TV.
There's a single repetitive philosophical theme woven into the story. We are one, good and evil. We do this to each other. It's been done before and we've been doing this to each other since we were cavemen. And we’ll keep doing it. Some examples:
“You see, this wound hurts just as much as yesterday’s wound, which hurt as much as the one before, and the one before the one before that, and as much as the first wound, the original wound that the first man feared. And though this wound is bleeding in the same way as all wounds bleed, and blood has always been the same, this wound thinks itself unique.”
“But there are always women, resisting, holding on, slowly chewing over their grief, bidding farewell to the dying, watching over the dead, dressing even the biggest coward in his hero’s shroud. Because a woman watches over a dying man knowing, like all women, that the real miracle is the giving of life, and so understands that it should end simply, without any fuss."
"Death is never heroic. Life can be, but not death. Death comes to us all, but we know that if a woman watches over us on our deathbed, we’ll go to heaven."
"Woman does not weep for the warrior; she weeps for the child who was born and who always leaves this world too soon.”
“All the dead are good because they are no longer alive and can therefore be imagined. As with fools and saints, we can lie about them because they can't defend themselves. They are a tale with countless morals, in illustration of whatever you like, a myth to be molded. The dead don't belong to the dead; the dead are ours.”
Back to the story. An elderly woman who might be a witch is interviewed on television about Marcelino. In her ramblings she mentions that he might be a saint. When she sees herself on television saying that, she starts to truly believe it. Social media help make him a cult figure standing against the capitalist theft of his farmland by his finagling brother.
Marcelino hides out in the woods living in caves, skeletons of cars and abandoned houses, eluding the police. The local cathedral is already a pilgrimage site then someone posts a sign to the ‘saints house.’ People start arriving and taking away pieces of the property as sacred relics. Previously people in town had called him Marcelino the Nobody.
Local stories from the war are interspersed. So many wars. At times the stories seem to refer to WW II and at other times to the Spanish Civil War. And speaking of wars, the survivalist portion of the story reminds me of The Twilight World by Werner Herzog, the story of Onoda, the Japanese man who hid in isolation for 29 years on a Pacific island after WW II.
In this rural culture there's a lot about witches, evil spells and goblins. The story is also interspersed with folk tales and fables.
I liked Marcelino and I found myself rooting for him as he eluded the police. As a boy he had doted on his younger brother and he had protected him and his mother from his father’s drunken rages.
The entire story is told in short punchy sentences. Here’s when Leno (Marcelino) is taken by his mother to his grandmother’s house, where his mother grew up.
“Leno's mother told him to give the little old lady a kiss. She smelled of cookies, earth, and bleach. Then she gave a toothless smile like a baby magpie and made a gurgling sound as if she had sand in her throat. She gurgled some more and his mother understood, even if he didn't. That was about all he could remember of the old world. The yellow smell of human piss and past lives filled with misery. A white washbowl with a tear shaped chip in its enamel, glowing in the darkness like an apparition. A one-eyed ginger cat asleep at the old woman's feet. A tatty old oil cloth on a rickety table. A few empty hooks, blackened by grease over the years. A handful of dried ears of corn tied up in a piece of cloth. Shadows dancing on the filthy wall. That's about it.”
The author (b. 1980) is one of only about 100,000 people who still use the Asturian language and one of the few who write in it. He mostly writes poetry and this book appears to be his only one translated into English.
[Revised and map added 7/18/23]
Top photo taken in Asturias from wallpaperflare.com
Map from ontheworldmap.com
The author from lit-across-frontiers.org
August 27, 2024
Super favorito
August 12, 2022
Somos las primeras palabras. Somos los que fuimos y los recién llegados. Somos la fiesta y la jornada de trabajo y somos el aburrimiento. Somos el que os quema y somos el que os apaga. Somos el que os despierta por la mañana y el que os derrumba en la cama al llegar la noche. Por supuesto, también somos el que os quita el sueño. Somos el Enemigo y el único consuelo. Casi nada. Un puñado de palabras, las últimas palabras.
February 14, 2025
I felt ecstatic reading this. Utterly intoxicating blend of Calvino’s cosmicomics wonder, Perec’s playful jigsaw-puzzle storytelling and Herzog’s visceral naturecore.
*
“We know that a star shone millions of years ago so that tonight a boy can point it out to a girl he loves and explain to her that, together with other stars, it makes up the constellation of Orion. Millions of years across space and an incalculable amount of energy never to be repeated, for her to smile and let him place an arm around her shoulders. We know that hundreds of thousands of millions of species of trees have begun to exist, have covered the earth and have disappeared, giving way to other forms of life in an infinitely slow and patient evolution, to create the perfect design for the sycamore seeds that, right now, are being carried by the wind, spinning around and around like tiny propellers, and that a small child is chasing, laughing as they catch one in their hand.”
*
“We know that a star shone millions of years ago so that tonight a boy can point it out to a girl he loves and explain to her that, together with other stars, it makes up the constellation of Orion. Millions of years across space and an incalculable amount of energy never to be repeated, for her to smile and let him place an arm around her shoulders. We know that hundreds of thousands of millions of species of trees have begun to exist, have covered the earth and have disappeared, giving way to other forms of life in an infinitely slow and patient evolution, to create the perfect design for the sycamore seeds that, right now, are being carried by the wind, spinning around and around like tiny propellers, and that a small child is chasing, laughing as they catch one in their hand.”
January 21, 2023
4.5 rounded down pending re-read
This the story of the life of Marcelino, aka Lino. But it is not just about the life of Marcelino. It is much greater than that, much greater. Woven in and around Marcelino's story is wisdom, poetic wisdom. There are some excellent reviews of this fine translation that will give you a much better appreciation for the book than I can - check out Paul Fulchers' at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and Robert's at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
I do want to add some quotes that I highlighted, something I rarely do:
From Kindle location 998:
Everything is happening at this moment and it's all of equal importance, the only difference being who is telling the story and why. Everything is a miracle.
We have the voice, we have the time, we have all time.
This is the moment.
From Kindle location 1625:
He told them he was a storyteller. He said that stories were more important than anything and that they had to be protected to prevent evil spirits from sucking the life from the earth. He told them that all you had to do to hear the stories was pay attention; they were in books and in prayers, but also in the most trivial chatter, in the most mundane gossip, in an ordinary hello, in dreams at night and in silences. He said that they are a voice that is present, ever present for those who listen. He told them that this is the moment and that we have the voice, he told them that we have the time, we have all time.
From Kindle location 1825:
Fear is real, not he who fears; death is real, not he who dies.
With any luck, every century or millenium, someone comes along with a new vision. Someone, somehow, has an idea no one has had before. Some will call this person a prophet; others, a madman, shaman, artist, or fool. But in every case this person, this first custodian of enlightenment, will pay very dearly, and when they eventually pass on, they'll become simply one part of this voice, a new tone, a harmony, a small grain of truth in which, believing it to be our own idea, we'll put our faith.
This the story of the life of Marcelino, aka Lino. But it is not just about the life of Marcelino. It is much greater than that, much greater. Woven in and around Marcelino's story is wisdom, poetic wisdom. There are some excellent reviews of this fine translation that will give you a much better appreciation for the book than I can - check out Paul Fulchers' at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and Robert's at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
I do want to add some quotes that I highlighted, something I rarely do:
From Kindle location 998:
Everything is happening at this moment and it's all of equal importance, the only difference being who is telling the story and why. Everything is a miracle.
We have the voice, we have the time, we have all time.
This is the moment.
From Kindle location 1625:
He told them he was a storyteller. He said that stories were more important than anything and that they had to be protected to prevent evil spirits from sucking the life from the earth. He told them that all you had to do to hear the stories was pay attention; they were in books and in prayers, but also in the most trivial chatter, in the most mundane gossip, in an ordinary hello, in dreams at night and in silences. He said that they are a voice that is present, ever present for those who listen. He told them that this is the moment and that we have the voice, he told them that we have the time, we have all time.
From Kindle location 1825:
Fear is real, not he who fears; death is real, not he who dies.
With any luck, every century or millenium, someone comes along with a new vision. Someone, somehow, has an idea no one has had before. Some will call this person a prophet; others, a madman, shaman, artist, or fool. But in every case this person, this first custodian of enlightenment, will pay very dearly, and when they eventually pass on, they'll become simply one part of this voice, a new tone, a harmony, a small grain of truth in which, believing it to be our own idea, we'll put our faith.
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