On the Shore. Rafael Chirbes.
To read such surprising literature in Spanish at this stage of my life fills me with satisfaction. Chirbes has devoted his life to this craft, but through sheer ignorance I have only just discovered him in this novel of great depth. His body of work is extensive: he has written several essays, nine novels, and has enjoyed the recognition of critics and the public for more than two decades.
The true protagonist of the narrative is life itself, told through the monologues and inner reflections of characters who are disheartened, frustrated, and powerless before the reality of a country, which is our own. The action unfolds over barely ten days, but what it recounts is the fantasy lived by a Spain that we believed full of infinite possibilities. Chirbes portrays the losers who never had a chance at the imaginary cake, and those who burst from eating too much.
The harshness and depth of the book perhaps lie in that feeling of entering a tunnel from which there is no escape. I do not know what Camus would have thought had this novel fallen into his hands. Is the nihilism that Chirbes exudes as real as our present reality?. To stir and churn the human being until leaving him empty, naked before a mirror that gives back a merciless, sordid and raw reflection of our human condition. Perhaps he is seeking the way for us to stop deceiving ourselves about our limits.
Recommending its reading seems to me very risky, despite the grandeur of the language he uses, and the oases that he occasionally offers the reader so as to catch a breath along the tortuous path of a thought laid bare.
Rafael Chirbes must be read at the necessary distance, so that his prose does not sink you into the same mire in which his characters sink. Too raw and too real to leave us indifferent. One must read this Valencian who gives the human condition no respite, and whose work is preceded by a hallmark of hopelessness.
