I took this away with me as I just needed a break from prize-listed books and something different from what I had been reading in the last few weeks. Plus, when I saw it was actually the first book from Ecuador I had read, I was even keener. Natalia Garcia Freire has a master\u2019s degree and teaches creative writing in Madrid. It is noted in Hay-on-Wye\u2019s biography that she also has a cat and a garden. This is her second novel to be translated into English. As I say, it is also the first book from Ecuador on this blog9i have a collection of short fiction from there, I thought. I had reviewed, but I hadn\u2019t. This caught my eye as it is set in one of those far-from-anything villages, as it says, nestled between the Jungle and the Andes.<\/p>\n
\nThe whole of Cocu\u00e1n continued to sing, but other voices, the voices of a man, woman and child said:<\/p>\n
Mildred.<\/p>\n
Sweet and powerful Mildred.<\/p>\n
Those who live in fear will become savages.<\/p>\n
Look at them, they said. And the voices swelled like the high tide, the waves crashing into my ears. Look at them in their Sunday finest, huddled so close together.<\/p>\n
Look at them, Mildred, deaf to the wind and blind like corrupted animals. With the wills of slaves. Look at the men and women created by the Word, molded from the dust of dead stars. Look at their body, which is the body of Christ, and look at their disoriented eyes, their old bones on the brink of snapping. Look upon the town of God that has abandoned you. Look upon the town of God that you have cursed.<\/p>\n
This is an example early on in the book how she is viewed<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The book uses a chorus of voices from the same village, Cocuan, as they all recount incidents and events surrounding a young girl who, many years earlier, had been taken from the town when her parents had both passed away after a series of strange events. What I loved about this book is that we have nine different people talking about the Girl Mildred and how she was, and it shows what can grow into a void left when someone leaves a small village under a cloud. So is this girl the witch, as some of those retellings remember their view of the events, and as they do, the lines between what is real and what is a dream world blur. Some strange events around the time Mildred and her parents died are recalled. A priest cut off his ear. The woman dies, and as her husband is there, someone attacks her body. A man goes to desperate ends to settle a debt. Did Midlred really see future events, and why did certain things? Locals want her to join them? This is a tale of a young girl who has had a bad life, then maybe sees things that might happen, and thus gets caught up in a whirlwind. With what happened with her mother dying and her father running off, it is one of those situations where myths are born.<\/p>\n
\nDeath is just like a pirate,<\/p>\n
It eats tough meat and drinks salt water.<\/p>\n
Death is just like a pirate,<\/p>\n
It bares its ass, then goes for the slaughter.<\/p>\n
This is what we sang on the way to the waterfall where Victor believed the old man might have gone, because several times before we had found him teetering there, with his eyes closed, covered by the water, and been forced to drag him back to the house like a stuffed dummy I would have liked to watch burn on an enormous bonfire fed with ragweed and rue to chase away the old man\u2019s evil spirit, the fleas and the flies. But no one wanted to hear my dirty plans, least of all V\u00edctor, who loved the old man with a stupid love. So that\u2019s where we were headed, once again, to look for him.<\/p>\n
Things get connected like an old man vanishing<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I love how this looked at Mildred through the nine characters as they cross into other stories, but each has a different take on her and the events. It also has a large chunk of the mysticism, folklore, and magic realism that make up the world Mildred and the locals are from, where simple events unconnected get drawn together and at the heart of it all is this girl now gone. I loved the mix of dream magic realism and just the way things like this can happen, a sort of super Chinese whispers around this one girl. Yes, she was a little odd, and maybe events tied with things she said, but that happens sometimes.It is just by accident, or perhaps she has that sort of second sight that D will occur because A and B have happened. I was reminded of the film The Big Fish if it had been made by David Lynch, as this is one of those tales that is about a place, the town itself, which is between the savage jungle and the barren, endless Andes, a sort of place where events happen. I was reminded in Big Fish that the events seem surreal, but there is always a little bit of truth in what you are being told. From tiny acorns mighty oaks grow, and this is the case here. Events have grown in the people\u2019s minds.<\/p>\n
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