Book Review: Camanchaca by Diego Zúñiga, translated by Megan McDowell
on Sheila Ash (India), 20/Oct/2022 09:57, 34 days ago
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CamanchacabyDiego ZúñigaMy rating:3 of 5 starsThis is a strange but intriguing little book. I came to it via other works by its translatorMegan McDowellwho amongst other things translated the marvelousLittle EyesbySamanta Schweblin. This is the first book byDiego Zúñigaand it has been immediately translated into English. He was included in
the Bogata 39 list of the best fiction writers under 40 from across
Latin America, seehttps://www.hayfestival.com/bogota39/....The
first thing to strike the reader is that this is an episodic novel of
very short passages, 110 in all ranging in length from a short line to
almost a full page. My copies rear page says this"A long drive
across Chile's Atacama Desert, traversing the "worn-out puzzle" of a
broken family - a young man's corrosive intimacy with his mother, the
obtrusive cheer of his absentee father, this uncle's unexplained death.
The camanchaca is a low fog pushing in from the sea, its moisture
sustaining near -barren landscape. Sometimes, the silences are what bind
us". This is spot on as a summary and intro.The text is as
fractured, disjointed and distributed as the young narrator's life - he
floats from his mother's house, to his father, to his grandfather's
house and between childhood memories and the present. It is fully of
references to contemporary music, gaming and sport (I particularly
related to his excitement at watching the amazing football (soccer)
match between Man U and Bayern Munich). The narrator's life is a mess,
his family is broken and dysfunctional, his neighbourhood dangerous, and
references to those who disappeared in previous generations abound. The
fog of the title is metaphorically felt throughout - his memories are
vague, they are from a childhood when he was too young to know, to ask
to understand, his questions aren't really answered, and the mystery of
what happened to his Uncle Neto deepens - both reader and narrator do
not know, the past remains unexplainable. Atmospheric, lyrical and
quietly addictive. An ambitious structure for a first novel, and it leaves this reader wondering how much is biographical and about what is to comefromZúñigaView all my reviewsashramblings
