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The Forgery
An artist races to finish his forgery of a masterpiece while held captive in surreal, menacing splendor.
José Federico Burgos is a failed painter turned forger trapped in surreal, an architectural masterpiece hidden behind high walls, an impish vagabond, and some very resourceful, very intimidating twins—Forgery pays homage to greats like Juan Rulfo and Luis Barragán, traversing late 20th Century Guadalajara with the exuberance and eccentricity of an 18th Century picaresque.
José Federico Burgos is a failed painter turned forger trapped in surreal, an architectural masterpiece hidden behind high walls, an impish vagabond, and some very resourceful, very intimidating twins—Forgery pays homage to greats like Juan Rulfo and Luis Barragán, traversing late 20th Century Guadalajara with the exuberance and eccentricity of an 18th Century picaresque.
166 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2013
About the author
Ave Barrera
23 books108 followersAve Barrera García (Guadalajara, Jalisco, 1980). Estudió la Licenciatura en Letras Hispánicas de la Universidad de Guadalajara, y el Curso de Formación de Editores de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Es cofundadora de Editorial Almadía, trabajó mucho tiempo como editora y como copywriter para medios electrónicos. Actualmente vive en la Ciudad de México y estudia la Maestría en Letras Modernas Portuguesas en la UNAM. La novela Puertas demasiado pequeñas fue realizada con el apoyo del FONCA en 2010. Su segunda novela es una obra juvenil titulada Una noche en el laberinto, que será publicada próximamente por editorial Edebé. Trabaja ya en un nuevo proyecto de novela: “Tratado de la vida marina”, que también cuenta con el apoyo del FONCA.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
July 17, 2022
"The Forgery" is Ellen Jones and Robin Myers's translation of the 2013 debut novel by Mexican author Ave Barrera "Puertas demasiado pequeñas" (minor recurrent gripe - the original title is better suited for the book, so why change it?), and the latest and 35th book from Charco Press - see my dedicated shelf for reviews of all of them.
The novel opens with our first person narrator contemplating a near suicidal leap from the wall of a large property, but one he is making not to end his life but to save it, or at least save his sanity, from the nightmare he experienced within:
My name is José Federico Burgos. I'm a painter. I make copies of Renaissance paintings and the occasional forgery. I'm sitting on the edge of the highest wall on the property. I'm going to jump. I'm going to do it any second now The dawn cold numbs my legs as they dangle over the abyss. The streetlamps are starting to turn off as the sunlight peeps over my shoulder. Sunbeams cut through the haze lying over the hamlet. I hear a cockerel's cry, but it must be miles away. This yellow morning light might be the last thing I see.
Now that it's getting brighter, I look down and try to calculate, again, the consequences of my fall: the wall is about six metres high, but then there's another fifteen-or twenty-metre slope of scrub and stone. The branches should help break the fall, but there's always a chance I'll crack my head open on a rock and be left paralysed. Not that I have any alternative. Going back to that house would be worse than plunging to my death.
José had been trying to turn his career reproducing Renaissance masters into one as an artist in his own right, but with limited financial success and, just as his finances are running out, he is offered a commission to forge a sixteenth century panel, an alterpiece, by a rich, but somewhat shady, antique dealer, Horacio Romero. His father acquired the piece, La Morisca (ficticious in real-life), reputed to be by Jan Mabuse, from the German occultist von Sebottendorf towards the end of WW2, and now Romero has the chance to sell it back to von Sebottendorf's family, but wants to keep the original.
José is taken to Romero's family home, one designed for Romero's father by the Mexican architect Luis Barragán, a property based on one the author has said she visited as a child.
Parts of the novel detail the preparations and techniques that José uses to reproduce the painting (one memorable scene has him needing a goats bladder, and having to remove it from a live specimen) but much of the novel concerns the rather odd set-up he finds himself entering, with Romero's double dealing, two identical twins who run the house (one a muxe, the other largely mute), the fate of Romero's father who became a dervish and disappeared into an underground tomb, Romero's mother, obsessed with the woman in the painting as if she were real, and a local beggar who knows a secret way into the property. The original Spanish title also hints at a practical issue with the task that José has accepted.
Balzac's The Hidden Masterpiece features in the epigraph and the novel itself, the following expanding on a key passage quoted from Horacio to our narrator (this from the translation by Katharine Prescott Wormeley)
It all makes for a rather intriguing mix although one where, at least for this reader, some of the novel's mysteries were unclear, such as the identity of the golfers that discover José in the opening pages after his fall (particularly odd as there isn't a golf course near to the house) or quite why La Morisca does exercise such a powerful hold on people. But this isn't a novel of answers but rather one of questions. And also a novel more cleverly constructed that may first appear, with the novel's architecture apparently following that of the building in which it is set: http://southwestreview.com/the-phanta...
3.5 stars - rounded to 4 for now, but interested to see other's views.
The novel opens with our first person narrator contemplating a near suicidal leap from the wall of a large property, but one he is making not to end his life but to save it, or at least save his sanity, from the nightmare he experienced within:
My name is José Federico Burgos. I'm a painter. I make copies of Renaissance paintings and the occasional forgery. I'm sitting on the edge of the highest wall on the property. I'm going to jump. I'm going to do it any second now The dawn cold numbs my legs as they dangle over the abyss. The streetlamps are starting to turn off as the sunlight peeps over my shoulder. Sunbeams cut through the haze lying over the hamlet. I hear a cockerel's cry, but it must be miles away. This yellow morning light might be the last thing I see.
Now that it's getting brighter, I look down and try to calculate, again, the consequences of my fall: the wall is about six metres high, but then there's another fifteen-or twenty-metre slope of scrub and stone. The branches should help break the fall, but there's always a chance I'll crack my head open on a rock and be left paralysed. Not that I have any alternative. Going back to that house would be worse than plunging to my death.
José had been trying to turn his career reproducing Renaissance masters into one as an artist in his own right, but with limited financial success and, just as his finances are running out, he is offered a commission to forge a sixteenth century panel, an alterpiece, by a rich, but somewhat shady, antique dealer, Horacio Romero. His father acquired the piece, La Morisca (ficticious in real-life), reputed to be by Jan Mabuse, from the German occultist von Sebottendorf towards the end of WW2, and now Romero has the chance to sell it back to von Sebottendorf's family, but wants to keep the original.
José is taken to Romero's family home, one designed for Romero's father by the Mexican architect Luis Barragán, a property based on one the author has said she visited as a child.
Parts of the novel detail the preparations and techniques that José uses to reproduce the painting (one memorable scene has him needing a goats bladder, and having to remove it from a live specimen) but much of the novel concerns the rather odd set-up he finds himself entering, with Romero's double dealing, two identical twins who run the house (one a muxe, the other largely mute), the fate of Romero's father who became a dervish and disappeared into an underground tomb, Romero's mother, obsessed with the woman in the painting as if she were real, and a local beggar who knows a secret way into the property. The original Spanish title also hints at a practical issue with the task that José has accepted.
Balzac's The Hidden Masterpiece features in the epigraph and the novel itself, the following expanding on a key passage quoted from Horacio to our narrator (this from the translation by Katharine Prescott Wormeley)
“Young man,” said Porbus, observing that he was speechless, with his eyes fixed on a picture, “do not look at that too long, or you will fall into despair.”
It was the Adam of Mabuse, painted by that wayward genius to enable him to get out of the prison where his creditors had kept him so long. The figure presented such fulness and force of reality that Nicolas Poussin began to comprehend the meaning of the bewildering talk of the old man. The latter looked at the picture with a satisfied but not enthusiastic manner, which seemed to say, “I have done better myself.”
“There is life in the form,” he remarked. “My poor master surpassed himself there; but observe the want of truth in the background."
It all makes for a rather intriguing mix although one where, at least for this reader, some of the novel's mysteries were unclear, such as the identity of the golfers that discover José in the opening pages after his fall (particularly odd as there isn't a golf course near to the house) or quite why La Morisca does exercise such a powerful hold on people. But this isn't a novel of answers but rather one of questions. And also a novel more cleverly constructed that may first appear, with the novel's architecture apparently following that of the building in which it is set: http://southwestreview.com/the-phanta...
3.5 stars - rounded to 4 for now, but interested to see other's views.
August 22, 2022
I received this book as part of my subscription to Charco Press. It is Ellen Jones and Robin Myers’ translation of Ave Barrera’s “Puertas demasiado pequeñas” which translates literally as “doors too small”. I don’t know, but to my mind “The Doors Are Too Small” feels like a better title - why not call it what the author wanted it to be called? I really enjoyed reading this book, so I guess my recommendation would be that you read it and decide for yourself whether changing the title was a good idea.
Our protagonist is José Federico Burgos and we meet him as he is preparing to throw himself off a high wall, not to end his life but in an attempt to escape a nightmare he has been living within that wall.
There are, I think, lots of ways to look at this book. This is partly because it asks more questions than it answers. It is very carefully constructed. I was trying to think of how to describe the structure and then I came across an interview with the author at southwestreview.com where she does this perfectly:
”I visualise it as a bridge, those colonial “m”-shaped bridges, like a piece of an aqueduct, with a pillar in the middle and another on either side. Those three points frame the entire narrative arc.”
What we read is an episode from the novel’s present (one pillar, the one that opens with José preparing to jump), a flashback, a continuation of the present (second pillar), a flashback and, finally, a further continuation of the present (third pillar).
But what we read also often has the feel of a dream or a hallucination and, for me, one of the questions as I finished the book was how much of it actually happened to our narrator and how much of it was happening in his head.
You see, José is a painter, a struggling painter who looks to fill in some gaps in his income by making copies of other works. And, as we head into the story we learn that he agreed to step over the line from copy to forgery when an antiques collector called Horacio persuaded him to copy a very old painting, with both Horacio and José knowing full well that Horacio was going to attempt to pass the copy off as the original.
It’s all go from the very first page and the pace rarely lets up. There are numerous points where things start happening and you wonder what on earth can be going on. Can you tell the reality from the dream (can you tell the original from the forgery?)?
The whole thing is actually a lot of fun to read. There are several memorable characters. And for me the fact that it doesn’t answer all its own questions adds to the fun. I have no idea who the golfers are at the start of the book, for example, but I think I like the book more for that.
Our protagonist is José Federico Burgos and we meet him as he is preparing to throw himself off a high wall, not to end his life but in an attempt to escape a nightmare he has been living within that wall.
There are, I think, lots of ways to look at this book. This is partly because it asks more questions than it answers. It is very carefully constructed. I was trying to think of how to describe the structure and then I came across an interview with the author at southwestreview.com where she does this perfectly:
”I visualise it as a bridge, those colonial “m”-shaped bridges, like a piece of an aqueduct, with a pillar in the middle and another on either side. Those three points frame the entire narrative arc.”
What we read is an episode from the novel’s present (one pillar, the one that opens with José preparing to jump), a flashback, a continuation of the present (second pillar), a flashback and, finally, a further continuation of the present (third pillar).
But what we read also often has the feel of a dream or a hallucination and, for me, one of the questions as I finished the book was how much of it actually happened to our narrator and how much of it was happening in his head.
You see, José is a painter, a struggling painter who looks to fill in some gaps in his income by making copies of other works. And, as we head into the story we learn that he agreed to step over the line from copy to forgery when an antiques collector called Horacio persuaded him to copy a very old painting, with both Horacio and José knowing full well that Horacio was going to attempt to pass the copy off as the original.
It’s all go from the very first page and the pace rarely lets up. There are numerous points where things start happening and you wonder what on earth can be going on. Can you tell the reality from the dream (can you tell the original from the forgery?)?
The whole thing is actually a lot of fun to read. There are several memorable characters. And for me the fact that it doesn’t answer all its own questions adds to the fun. I have no idea who the golfers are at the start of the book, for example, but I think I like the book more for that.
August 28, 2026
Баш лоше.
Покушај мистерије, трилера, магичног реализма, не знам ни сам шта је хтела ауторка да постигне овиме. Уз то, веома невешто написано.
Покушај мистерије, трилера, магичног реализма, не знам ни сам шта је хтела ауторка да постигне овиме. Уз то, веома невешто написано.
January 9, 2023
A wildly exuberant and often bizarre novel depicting the late 80's/early 90's underground art scene in Guadalajara. The translation from Spanish by Ellen Jones and Robin Myers was excellent, and I hope there's more to come from Ave Barrera and Charco Press.
August 12, 2024
This was brilliant! It’s about a painter who copies and forges renaissance paintings and one day he gets an urgent request from a client to copy a huge painting for some heirs who want to buy it. The painter lives in the client’s whilst he goes off to Japan two meet the buyers, but he starts to go kind of mad under the pressure of forging the painting and also with discovering the strange secrets that the client is keeping hidden around the house.
It was a very plot heavy book but I loved how it propelled you forward and it moved really fast. The writing was excellent and I found the main character so funny to read about. Everything that happened was just so entertaining and it was a really unique story of mystery and drama with a slight undertone of gothic parody to it as well. I really enjoyed this one and I want to go forward and read the authors that Barrera was paying homage to when she was writing this.
It was a very plot heavy book but I loved how it propelled you forward and it moved really fast. The writing was excellent and I found the main character so funny to read about. Everything that happened was just so entertaining and it was a really unique story of mystery and drama with a slight undertone of gothic parody to it as well. I really enjoyed this one and I want to go forward and read the authors that Barrera was paying homage to when she was writing this.
February 8, 2020
Por una maldición, un milagro o mera coincidencia, todo lo que leo últimamente habla no sólo de arte, sino específicamente de pintura. Me gusta tanto como me entristece y también me hace entender, en el lenguaje que es accesible para mí (el literario), ese otro lenguaje (el pictórico) que tanto llama mi atención, que tanto anhelo, pero que me elude tanto.
Puertas demasiado pequeñas (novela a la que llegué sin querer porque quería leer Restauración y mis papás me regalaron ésta) me gustó porque es divertida y ligera, pero tiene un sentido claro de la estructura y de la sutileza, lo que le permite moverse con confianza de lo real y verosímil a lo fantasmagórico y lo directamente fantasioso. Creo que lo único que no me gusta es la recreación de la oralidad, que es algo acartonada.
De mis clases de pintura que ya no tomo me quedó de tarea pendiente leer, justamente, La obra maestra desconocida de Balzac, que Barrera cita en varias ocasiones a lo largo de esta novela. Ya la había leído antes, hace años, pero, por una maldición, un milagro o por mera coincidencia (o porque las puertas son demasiado pequeñas), a continuación tendré que atender el llamado de Balzac. Y eso está muy fuerte.
Puertas demasiado pequeñas (novela a la que llegué sin querer porque quería leer Restauración y mis papás me regalaron ésta) me gustó porque es divertida y ligera, pero tiene un sentido claro de la estructura y de la sutileza, lo que le permite moverse con confianza de lo real y verosímil a lo fantasmagórico y lo directamente fantasioso. Creo que lo único que no me gusta es la recreación de la oralidad, que es algo acartonada.
De mis clases de pintura que ya no tomo me quedó de tarea pendiente leer, justamente, La obra maestra desconocida de Balzac, que Barrera cita en varias ocasiones a lo largo de esta novela. Ya la había leído antes, hace años, pero, por una maldición, un milagro o por mera coincidencia (o porque las puertas son demasiado pequeñas), a continuación tendré que atender el llamado de Balzac. Y eso está muy fuerte.
September 6, 2022
This offbeat novel opens with the narrator jumping from a high wall, his hand already broken, a leap so dangerous that it is thought he is attempting suicide. Yet he survives, and is discovered by golfers, though there is no golf course in the vicinity.
At once the reader is unsure of whether the narrator, an artist, is himself crazy, or his life has become crazy.
Set in the Guadalajara region of Mexico in the 1990s, the protagonist and narrator, José Federico Burgos, introduces himself as a “painter,” but his primary trade is in producing copies of Renaissance paintings, something he has previously been convicted for. Unable to make a living from his own original art he reluctantly accepts commission to forge a mysterious painting by a black marketeer who resides in an extravagant mansion.
This is a rollercoaster of a ride, and Burgos, something of a hero character, finds himself unable to get off, as a chain of unexpected circumstances opens up before him.
It’s a thoroughly exciting and clever account on exactly what is real and what is fake.
At once the reader is unsure of whether the narrator, an artist, is himself crazy, or his life has become crazy.
Set in the Guadalajara region of Mexico in the 1990s, the protagonist and narrator, José Federico Burgos, introduces himself as a “painter,” but his primary trade is in producing copies of Renaissance paintings, something he has previously been convicted for. Unable to make a living from his own original art he reluctantly accepts commission to forge a mysterious painting by a black marketeer who resides in an extravagant mansion.
This is a rollercoaster of a ride, and Burgos, something of a hero character, finds himself unable to get off, as a chain of unexpected circumstances opens up before him.
It’s a thoroughly exciting and clever account on exactly what is real and what is fake.
July 28, 2022
This novella by Mexican writer Ave Barrera was originally published in Spanish with the title Puertas Demasiado Pequeñas (Universidad Veracruzana, 2013). The 2022 English translation released by Charco Press is translated by Ellen Jones and Robin Myers. The jacket cover has a complimentary blurb by Cristina Rivera Garza, an author I respect for calling attention to femicide.
The Forgery verged more into psychological horror territory than I expected. A fevered wild dream with a few possible interpretations. What is real? Hallucinations? Although cynical me guessed some of the plot points, it still left a disconcerting feeling. 3.6 rounded up. Intrigued by the historical mention of Caxcans (Indigenous Mexicans) resisting Spaniard colonization at the end of the book.
Quotes:
'Young man, do not look too long at that painting or you'll sink into despair',....
'Grasp the spirit, the soul, the appearance of things and beings. Effects! What are effects but accidents of life, not life itself?'
The Forgery verged more into psychological horror territory than I expected. A fevered wild dream with a few possible interpretations. What is real? Hallucinations? Although cynical me guessed some of the plot points, it still left a disconcerting feeling. 3.6 rounded up. Intrigued by the historical mention of Caxcans (Indigenous Mexicans) resisting Spaniard colonization at the end of the book.
Quotes:
'Young man, do not look too long at that painting or you'll sink into despair',....
'Grasp the spirit, the soul, the appearance of things and beings. Effects! What are effects but accidents of life, not life itself?'
December 28, 2022
While there were various elements (art, unreliable narrators, magical realism/surrealism, an interesting location) of interest, the parts never fully coalesced into a satisfying whole for me. It was ok but also missed the mark for me.
August 10, 2025
Women in Translation Month - Book #6
★★★★
★★★★
May 31, 2025
José Federico Burgos has just jumped from the wall of an elaborate castle, designed by Luis Barragán, and still alive and conscious, has been discovered by a pair of golfers; he is taken to hospital where he suffers from seizures and delirium, and sees, or thinks he sees in his dazed condition, a nun praying the rosary beside him, the golfers who rescued him, and a mural painter strangely working at night in the deserted hallways. The central story unfolds within this oneiric frame narrative. Before jumping, Burgos had been a down-and-out art copyist, restoring and reproducing old Renaissance paintings for his bourgeois clients. He was four months behind on rent, his truck had been towed, and his most recent client had forgotten to pay him. Everything looks desperate until a mysterious dealer named Horacio Romero offers him a lucrative opportunity: to produce a copy of a Belgian painting La Morisca (The Moor) attributed to Mabuse (though the painting itself lacks any signature). Burgos is reluctant—he had been involved in a forgery scheme before and wound up in jail—but out of equal parts desperation and curiosity, he finally agrees.
Horacio's fortress is built around La Morisca which resides in a vault in the center. The painting cannot be removed. Horacio's father had purchased it from the occultist Baron Sebottendorf, fallen in love with the woman depicted in it and eventually, becoming a mystic dervish, had locked himself in the room to die in rapture before it. "Real collectors are so passionate they want to live the life of the objects in their collection," Horacio explains about the objects in his possession—the monetary value is nothing compared to the spirit of the art and the owner's intense desire to commune with the object. La Morisca is often thought of in the book not as a painting but as a woman, and a dangerous one. "Do not look at that painting too long, young man, or you will sink into despair," Horacio cautions him. Despite his technical knowledge and artisanship, however, Burgos struggles to copy the painting. There aren't simply logistical obstacles (the painting cannot be transported to a studio) but metaphysical barriers. Burgos tries too precisely to mimic the brushstrokes of Mabuse. By replicating the figure of the Moor he has failed to represent the woman's spirit. "I don't know if the La Morisca I'd painted was so similar as to be different, or so different as to end up being the same," he explains in hindsight. Like Horacio's father, Burgos finds himself locked in a tower, trying to recreate the arresting image in the dark, striving to make not a lifeless wax copy but, somehow, an aesthetic resurrection of the woman herself. Burgos eventually succeeds by finding "the intimate sense that shatters external form". The copy, ironically, does not slavishly reproduce every brushstroke but captures something more ineffable. "You're no mere copyist, you're a poet!" Horacio declares. The problem, as the mural artist in the hospital explains to him, was that "you were still yourself, instead of becoming the other." The true forgery happens within—the artist must remold his inner self to the shape of the original, not simply retrace the outer figure.
And so, following this logic of iteration and doubling, one becoming the other, Burgos finds himself in the same situation all over again. History repeats, scenes copy one another, and Burgos is locked up again—just as he was before, and just as Horacio's father had been. It's a surreal novel—Burgos, with his rounds of absinthe, his cyanide- and led-mixed paints, his hospital painkillers, moves from one scene to the next in a hallucinogenic reverie. "The question is, you are you? If you are you, then you will seal the destiny of those who must be released. He who finds the door also finds the key," a woman beside a guava tree explains to him. I can see the connections to Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo but I was also reminded of William Gaddis' The Recognitions, another story of an art forger whose own identity becomes unfixed in a world of copies and duplicates.
Horacio's fortress is built around La Morisca which resides in a vault in the center. The painting cannot be removed. Horacio's father had purchased it from the occultist Baron Sebottendorf, fallen in love with the woman depicted in it and eventually, becoming a mystic dervish, had locked himself in the room to die in rapture before it. "Real collectors are so passionate they want to live the life of the objects in their collection," Horacio explains about the objects in his possession—the monetary value is nothing compared to the spirit of the art and the owner's intense desire to commune with the object. La Morisca is often thought of in the book not as a painting but as a woman, and a dangerous one. "Do not look at that painting too long, young man, or you will sink into despair," Horacio cautions him. Despite his technical knowledge and artisanship, however, Burgos struggles to copy the painting. There aren't simply logistical obstacles (the painting cannot be transported to a studio) but metaphysical barriers. Burgos tries too precisely to mimic the brushstrokes of Mabuse. By replicating the figure of the Moor he has failed to represent the woman's spirit. "I don't know if the La Morisca I'd painted was so similar as to be different, or so different as to end up being the same," he explains in hindsight. Like Horacio's father, Burgos finds himself locked in a tower, trying to recreate the arresting image in the dark, striving to make not a lifeless wax copy but, somehow, an aesthetic resurrection of the woman herself. Burgos eventually succeeds by finding "the intimate sense that shatters external form". The copy, ironically, does not slavishly reproduce every brushstroke but captures something more ineffable. "You're no mere copyist, you're a poet!" Horacio declares. The problem, as the mural artist in the hospital explains to him, was that "you were still yourself, instead of becoming the other." The true forgery happens within—the artist must remold his inner self to the shape of the original, not simply retrace the outer figure.
And so, following this logic of iteration and doubling, one becoming the other, Burgos finds himself in the same situation all over again. History repeats, scenes copy one another, and Burgos is locked up again—just as he was before, and just as Horacio's father had been. It's a surreal novel—Burgos, with his rounds of absinthe, his cyanide- and led-mixed paints, his hospital painkillers, moves from one scene to the next in a hallucinogenic reverie. "The question is, you are you? If you are you, then you will seal the destiny of those who must be released. He who finds the door also finds the key," a woman beside a guava tree explains to him. I can see the connections to Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo but I was also reminded of William Gaddis' The Recognitions, another story of an art forger whose own identity becomes unfixed in a world of copies and duplicates.
July 6, 2024
Purchased this in CDMX because I’ve been enjoying book souvenirs (I.e. buying a translated book by an author from that place there). There weren’t a ton of options by Mexican authors but this one seemed interesting! I was really drawn into the story through the narration of this harrowing tale of Burgos being manipulated into forging an eccentric (perhaps crazy) art dealer’s piece. Reminded me a bit of Murakami’s surrealism but in less than 200 pages and without so many uncomfortable (controversial) depictions of women. Would recommend though if you enjoy that sort of thing!
September 30, 2022
A literary art thriller, crammed full of action, art and mystery, but what makes this book really special is the characters. They have been crafted with such care and like one of those renaissance paintings you get drawn in and see much more than what is on the surface. I really liked how everybody has their own agenda but are playing their cards close to their chest giving nothing away and making you guess something new every other page.
Our main character is José, an artist down on his luck, about to lose everything but luck throws one more job his way, a forgery of a sixteenth painting and his client is the suspiciously excitable Horacio, he is up to his neck in dodgy doings, and you can sense an underling threat of violence. My favourite character was Horacio's mother she felt like she was straight out of a painting stuck in a constant pose of beauty, the scenes came alive when she stepped into them.
The book is set in Guadalajara, Mexico and you get a real sense of the place, how hot and dry it was and that midday sleepiness. There is also a ridiculous amount of food included too, I don't think my mouth has watered quite as much.
This was a very interesting read, plenty of knowledge shared about how to forge a painting and the techniques used and a nice tidy plot with no loose ends. I'm now off for tacos and to look for a goats bladder.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2022...
Our main character is José, an artist down on his luck, about to lose everything but luck throws one more job his way, a forgery of a sixteenth painting and his client is the suspiciously excitable Horacio, he is up to his neck in dodgy doings, and you can sense an underling threat of violence. My favourite character was Horacio's mother she felt like she was straight out of a painting stuck in a constant pose of beauty, the scenes came alive when she stepped into them.
The book is set in Guadalajara, Mexico and you get a real sense of the place, how hot and dry it was and that midday sleepiness. There is also a ridiculous amount of food included too, I don't think my mouth has watered quite as much.
This was a very interesting read, plenty of knowledge shared about how to forge a painting and the techniques used and a nice tidy plot with no loose ends. I'm now off for tacos and to look for a goats bladder.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2022...
January 18, 2024
Tiene un comienzo muy fuerte y enganchador y un poco me quedé esperando más en el intermedio del libro, sin embargo, el final es algo espectacular, el personaje me produjo demasiado cansancio, casi como una persona a la que esperas que le pase algo malo. Es una perfecta lectura para el bus, suave y entretenida.
July 18, 2023
I enjoyed this book. I liked the story, I liked the characters a lot, the mystery around the painting and the hold it has on men was intriguing, and the passages explaining the techniques involved in copying original art work was interesting, but that this was intended to be surreal completely eluded me until the last page. It wasn’t dreamlike or disorienting, that I could easily follow it is evidence of that, and I didn’t feel it had a
March 9, 2025
Really good imagery throughout and some interesting storylines but wild shit starts happening towards the end. I think Ave Barrera did a line of coke and started throwing darts at a dart board when deciding what happened next. Truly unhinged for the last few chapters at no point during them did I know what was coming
July 24, 2025
Me hizo romantizar vivir en Guadalajara, me dan ganas de volver a comer su ceviche, ver sus jacarandas y tomar su mezcal.
Luego recuerdo el tráfico en un calor de 38 grados, las inundaciones, el aburrimiento y la hepatitis que te puede dar tomando un tejuino en el centro.
Mucha referencia a pájaros, coincidencia, AVE Barrera?
Luego recuerdo el tráfico en un calor de 38 grados, las inundaciones, el aburrimiento y la hepatitis que te puede dar tomando un tejuino en el centro.
Mucha referencia a pájaros, coincidencia, AVE Barrera?
July 23, 2025
loved. loved loved loved loved loved why do I love weird little fucked up books idk but I do
June 30, 2022
This ingenious debut features a painter down on his luck, a devious man who offers him a fortune to copy a painting, a muxe (Zapotec word for a third-sex person) and her twin, an enigmatic vagrant, and the magnetic woman of color featured in the painting who controls the fate of all who view her. So gripping and propulsive-- please, someone, make this into a movie!
August 18, 2026
Jose and his series of unfortunate events wrong decisions.
August 16, 2022
There’s something that draws me to novels about art and artists like a magnet. As you might guess from the title, this novel concerns an art fraud. José is a struggling artist in Guadalajara, behind on his rent on the studio where he lives. The landlady’s nephew is getting quite threatening about the amount he owes, and he needs to get some money, fast. When he gets a meeting with Señor Horacio and is made an offer to create a forgery of a lost Renaissance masterpiece, he doesn't hesitate long, but this job isn't going to turn out to be simple, by any stretch of the imagination. Cloistered and Horacio's hacienda, José will find trouble which will lead to an interesting denouement. A different kind of literary art thriller - I very much enjoyed it. Read my full review at https://annabookbel.net/the-forgery-b...
December 18, 2022
It was such a joy to be reading “The Forgery” by Ave Barrera in Mexico, even though not in Guadalajara, where the story takes place. Every chapter surprised me further and drew me into a dreamlike realm where reality blends with fantasy and illusion.
José is a painter specialising in coping Renaissance paintings for wealthy clients. One day, through serendipitous circumstances, he meets Horacio, who makes him an offer he cannot refuse. José is asked to forge La Morisca, a 16th century panel, an altarpiece. Horacio lives in a house supposedly designed by Luis Barragán, together with Isabel, his mother who hasn’t left the house for the last 20 years, and two staff members, muxe Tona and her mute brother El Gordo. From now on, surreal and fantastic events take place, which will draw José deeper into the house and his work and at the same time will make him want to escape and forget about the whole experience.
Barrera phenomenally combined personas existing in real life with fictitious characters and created such a playful story on identity, artist’s ego and the irresistible appeal of art. I was fascinated by various forms of masculinity and gender depicted: queer Horacio, macho José and muxe Tona from the Isthmus region of Oaxaca, and how they get dissected and pulled apart, due to La Morisca (addressed always as “she”) being in the spotlight and manipulating people around her. The atmosphere of the novel, as well as mysteries enveloping some characters, which often, in fragments, resembled some films by David Lynch (“Lost Highway” especially) left me with many questions. So much is said but so much is also omitted and sometimes the unsaid holds greater power over the events, the time and space - which stretches, overlaps, slows down and speeds inexplicably. A haunting, really unique story.
José is a painter specialising in coping Renaissance paintings for wealthy clients. One day, through serendipitous circumstances, he meets Horacio, who makes him an offer he cannot refuse. José is asked to forge La Morisca, a 16th century panel, an altarpiece. Horacio lives in a house supposedly designed by Luis Barragán, together with Isabel, his mother who hasn’t left the house for the last 20 years, and two staff members, muxe Tona and her mute brother El Gordo. From now on, surreal and fantastic events take place, which will draw José deeper into the house and his work and at the same time will make him want to escape and forget about the whole experience.
Barrera phenomenally combined personas existing in real life with fictitious characters and created such a playful story on identity, artist’s ego and the irresistible appeal of art. I was fascinated by various forms of masculinity and gender depicted: queer Horacio, macho José and muxe Tona from the Isthmus region of Oaxaca, and how they get dissected and pulled apart, due to La Morisca (addressed always as “she”) being in the spotlight and manipulating people around her. The atmosphere of the novel, as well as mysteries enveloping some characters, which often, in fragments, resembled some films by David Lynch (“Lost Highway” especially) left me with many questions. So much is said but so much is also omitted and sometimes the unsaid holds greater power over the events, the time and space - which stretches, overlaps, slows down and speeds inexplicably. A haunting, really unique story.
August 28, 2024
Why was this such a mind fuck for me at the end? What is the forged part of this story? You can tell the author tried to include an artist theme using the narration as a vessel to portray josés’ artistic perspective. Scenes with Horicos mother are experienced as you would a painting, she is told off like a muse, an old painting with wise background. He is not shy to admit to his habit of adhering when manipulated which brings him into this mess giving myself the intrigue of not knowing whats going to happen again without boring into the naive un experienced, who is curious yet the audience knows better storyline.
September 28, 2020
Me gustó mucho más que la primera novela que leía de ésta autora: Restauración.
Desde el primer momento la narración te atrapa, es ágil y fue muy fácil relacionarme e interesarme en un primer momento por que la historia se lleva a cabo en mi ciudad natal.
Por si fuera poco que pudiera ver mi ciudad a través de las páginas, el tema del arte fue extremadamente interesante.
No se nada sobre pintura, pero saber sobre restauración, copias, colores, técnicas, procesos...simplemente me fascinó. Obviamente la autora sabe de lo que habla y supo sacarle provecho en su novela al tema del arte.
Desde el primer momento la narración te atrapa, es ágil y fue muy fácil relacionarme e interesarme en un primer momento por que la historia se lleva a cabo en mi ciudad natal.
Por si fuera poco que pudiera ver mi ciudad a través de las páginas, el tema del arte fue extremadamente interesante.
No se nada sobre pintura, pero saber sobre restauración, copias, colores, técnicas, procesos...simplemente me fascinó. Obviamente la autora sabe de lo que habla y supo sacarle provecho en su novela al tema del arte.
September 22, 2022
One of the best books of the year. So much happens in the span of 172 pages. Rich in authentic, clever details, this vivid portrayal of a young starving artist who gets the seeming break of a lifetime — forging a Renaissance panel for a wealthy crook, paid with an astronomical sum — captures the desperate space between the haves and have-nots. No one is a total saint nor criminal, and there’s a whiff of magical realism to keep you guessing. The translator for Ave Barrera must’ve loved every minute of bringing this poetic novella to life for an English audience.
September 10, 2023
Una grata novela que explora la obsesión plástica para expresar tanto el poder que puede dominar sobre la supuesta autonomía del arte como la entrega total que se hace a una pintura. Razonable, inteligente y fantástica, esta narración de Ave Barrera deja un muy buen sabor de boca después de haberla leído.
March 19, 2025
Action packed and very exciting - we follow a painter who gets wrapped up in a scary situation in the underground art scene. I started this quite a while ago and picked back up yesterday. Once you sit down with it, it moves very quickly. I think this would sit somewhere between a 3 and a 4 for me.
August 25, 2024
Nunca había leído un libro tan loco como puertas demasiado pequeñas. Me gustó pero me dejó con muchas preguntas!
January 2, 2014
Sobriedad, fluidez y naturalidad en todo el libro, con un gran sentido de la estructura. De pronto parece osada la dirección que toma la trama con la aparición de Isabel (cuya intervención representa algunos de los puntos más débiles), y el desenlace es definitivamente muy atrevido. Sin embargo, se lee muy bien, involucra e interesa, las sensaciones son vívidas y el retrato de la Gdl es entrañable por los detalles y la oralidad. No hay cabos sueltos (aunque algunos parecen un tanto artificiosos) y aunque se juega con los límites de la verosimilitud no es algo chocante. Muy bien inicia su carrera Ave Barrera.
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