Méndez Guédez, Juan Carlos – El libro de Esther (1999)

Synopsis

For every 304,000 cars that crash on highways, only one plane crashes. For every 620,000 buses that overturn on the highways, barely one plane crashes. For every two million motorcycles that are crushed, skidded, disassembled, hit, for every two million of them that explode, only one plane goes down. Thus begins the adventure of Eleazar, a Venezuelan journalist who, to find himself, leaves for the Canary Islands in search of the frustrated love of his adolescence. A delirious trip, an overflowing carnival, two women and a passionate love are the elements that make up this work, in which humor and tenderness uncover the hidden fragility of the masculine condition and make up a text full of hilarious situations and nostalgia. Made from a reinterpretation of the brilliant sentimental tradition of Hispano-American narrative, this novel surprises for its freshness, for its capacity for seduction and for the skill with which it combines the technical rigor of the contemporary novel and the amenity of the best serial classics. Book of love, oblique portrait of the Spanish emigration of the fifties, stark and anti-heroic drawing of Latin America at the end of the millennium, “El libro de Esther” reflects the vigorous health of the Latin American novel of the 21st century and confirms the expectations created by Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez with his previous works.

(SOURCE: Casa del Libro)