Out in the Open by Jesus Carrasco and Margaret Jull Costa (translator)
| Out in the Open by Jesus Carrasco and Margaret Jull Costa (translator) | |
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| Category: Literary Fiction | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A bleak Spanish big-seller, that can grip with the scenario and the description, but that might not find full favour for the mood or plotting. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Maybe |
| Pages: 192 | Date: April 2016 |
| Publisher: Vintage | |
| ISBN: 9780099582182 | |
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Meet the boy. We never learn his name – in fact we learn very little in this book, such as where or when we are, and why. What we do know is that he has left home. We get the feeling his father is too handy with punishment, but that can't be the only reason for him first hiding out in an olive grove overnight, then fleeing across the plains surrounding his family's village. Especially as he's chosen one of the most awkward, attritional times to cross said plains – the land is in the middle of a horrendous drought. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherd, however, he finds some light and liquid, but is this substitute father figure ever going to be enough to help the boy flee what he needs to?
I have to say it kind of boggles me how this book became such a big seller in its native Spain (and, we are told, in Holland). There definitely is a compelling telling about some aspects of it, and if you don't start this book with a few drinks lined up then you're asking for trouble. You really do live the hardship the landscape provides. But beyond that I felt the bleakness too relentless and just too much. Neither the naïve boy nor the elderly man is fully able to get by on their own – so does the new partnership they form provide enough warmth to make the book a satisfying read? I felt not.
By the end I was definitely thinking it was intending to be something other than a harsh, The Road-styled drama. I might be reading too much into it, but there is a definite religious feel to some of the language at the conclusions of several characters at the end. I could tell you what I think the lesson of the book is, but I feel it would spoil it. Just as the book doesn't pin down anything such as location, era or suchlike – although it drops in Spanish foodstuffs and terms, and seems to be in the interwar period – so it lets you pick up what you wish and make of the extreme circumstances what you want. It did feel to me however a little too bleak and drear, so if you in fact don't want to take anything from these pages, I would not be at all surprised. They are definitely adult only, and perhaps don't hold quite enough surprises, and in the end left me gasping – but only for a drink.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
Winter Damage by Natasha Carthew is another Cormac McCarthy equivalent featuring a man and a lad.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Out in the Open by Jesus Carrasco and Margaret Jull Costa (translator) at Amazon.com.
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