Rita IndianaCritiques

I wonder if I would have enjoyed this book more if I had loved Tentacle less, or if this had been the first book by Indiana that I read. Tentacle was one of my favorite reads of 2019 -- so breathtakingly bonkers with time travel, climate collapse, magical anemones, art theory/criticism/history, class & gender criticism... That book could barely be contained. Made in Saturn keeps just enough of some of the themes, particularly the history and language of art, and the legacy of colonialism and revolution in the Caribbean to feel like the work of the same author, but with all of the speculative elements stripped away and a rather dislikable narrator. (Many of the characters in Tentacle weren't terribly likable either, but with so much going on, it mattered less.) In the end it had interesting things to say, but I can't help hoping Indiana's future books contain more of the wild exuberance of Tentacle.

Que el español sigue vivo nos lo demuestran los más de cuatrocientos millones de hablantes que farfullamos esta lengua desde la cuna, más otras decenas de millones de personas en el mundo que se han interesado en aprenderla. Que el español literario también lo está es buena muestra esta novela de Rita Indiana.
Sin complejos, con la fuerza de una lengua cibaeña crisol de influencias lingüísticas lejanas geográficamente pero ya seculares en su promiscuidad: españolas, evidente, pero también amerindias, africanas, y sin hacerle ascos al inglés, que el vecino del norte pesa e influye mucho. La autora desenvuelve su relato con una osadía y una agilidad de muñeca al empuñar la pluma, o las teclas del ordenador, dignas de admiración. Sin corsés academicistas pero con la rotundidad de un español más vivo en tanto que no es purista pues como decía Cela, cito de memoria, “el español es de todos y cada uno lo habla como le sale de los cojones”.
La novela es todo un ejercicio de prestidigitación léxica al servicio de una trama compleja de seguir en sus saltos temporales e identidades solapadas. Un argumento desquiciante, alocado en su desarrollo que, sin sermonear, no elude hablar de “arte, política y ambientalismo”. Sólo queda decir: “Pasen y lean”.

We meet Argenis in the Havana airport--his father has sent him from the DR to detox. That doesn't go as planned, but we learn a lot about Argenis. When he makes it back to his aunt in the DR, we learn as he does.

Argenis struggles with his family history--and that is what this book is about. He is the younger and un-favored son of a former revolutionary. His parents were revolutionaries in the 60s. His father then flipped and took a position in Balaguer's government, and is now fairly high up. Argenis has little to no respect for his father, or his older brother who was a show-off as a child and is now a businessman who uses their father's connections. Argenis, meanwhile, is an artist and has attended art school. He started with cocaine before becoming hooked on heroin. Does he want to stop? It's unclear, but he DOES want to be able to function, to do his art, to not constantly be on the hunt for his next high.

As he manages to stay off the heroin, he learns more about what his parents, their friends, and his aunt went through--and about his grandmother's life as a maid--he gains some perspective. He has only ever wanted to do art. Not to perform recitations on his father's command as his brother did. Nor to use his father's connections to succeed in business--as his brother does. Yet he also finds it very sad how his grandmother--who now owns her former employers' house--still wears her maid's uniform and sleeps in her maid's room. Though she only serves herself. It seems he is ready to grow up and find a happy medium, if he can stay away from heroin.

Confusing. Very confusing. But a fun and easy read. One of those books I'll remember visuals/scenes from but not the whole story, because the whole story just didn't come through clearly enough for me.

This is one weird novel.

Meet Argenis Luna - the son of a politician from the Dominican Republic (who started as a revolutionary together with Che and Castro). When we first meet him, he had been sent by his family to Cuba to try to cure him from his addiction to drugs. Except things in Cuba do not go exactly as planned and the whole trip turns into an attempt to face his past and the demons in it - mostly by creating new ones and burning bridges. Not literally - despite his pedigree.

The first part of the novel, the one set in Cuba almost made me stop reading - it is not a bad novel but it seems to go nowhere and I am not much for the existential thoughts of a recovering addict. The style and the tone does not change when he goes back to the Dominican Republic but something started working a bit differently. Confronting the past becomes the norm and we see that past unfolding in memories - despite his current prominence, the father was never the man he expected to be. Contrasting this with the grandmother (who worked as a domestic all her life) and the aunt (who ran as soon as she could but was not unscathed), the father emerges from the page bigger than life - and makes you realize that Argenis has all the right to be disillusioned and bitter.

By the end of the novel, it seems like all the ghosts of the past are exorcised - at least the ones he started the novel with so he goes on to try to deal with the ones he created himself.

The world is full of news and prose for the revolutions that swept the Caribbean - some more successful, some less. This novel tries to explore the question of "what happened next, when the cameras stopped rolling and people had to go back to their lives". It is not a new question and it is not the first novel to do that and in a way it fails -- things end up too neatly, too orderly while the world does not work that way. But in other ways it succeeds in bringing past and present together and showing a world that exists at the moment, behind the slogans and away from the cameras.

I did not like some parts of the novel but I liked the style so I think I will look for some of the other books by the author.½

I was a good 2/3 sold on the cover alone (just last week I'd been bemoaning the lack of tentacle and marine biology fiction in my home library), THEN I saw "Translated," THEN I saw the Caribbean Writers prize, THEN I flipped it over and saw magic phrases like "Santeria prophecy" and "travel back in time and save the ocean," and "sacred anemone." Like, seriously, I could go on, but I was already sold. Why had I never heard of this book before the magical wizards at Literati put this book in front of my face?

Anyway, it seems like all that could be a lot to live up to, but it DID. The book starts out brutal -- with automatic systems that detect virus in Haitian refugees and gas, incinerate, and dispose of them -- and never really lets up. There is rape, there is racism, there is violence. This is not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination. At least one of the POV characters is an out-and-out asshole, all of them are hardened in some way. As the book goes on it layers more characters and more timelines and just when it seems it may all spin out of control all the pieces start converging and it's kind of amazing when it all comes together.

This book is startling and mud-dragged and glistening and fraught and intellectual and visceral and tawdry and a gut-punch and new.

Amazing.

Short yet dense story. Translation-wise, I did not detect too many bumps in the road. Tentacle is an interesting premise that gets bogged down in places - especially in the early going where characters and perspectives shift quite quickly and with little guidance for the reader. This makes it a bit difficult to keep track of the characters and their relations but things do click together by the end. There is also some violent imagery and none of the characters are all that sympathetic. Not an easy read but I did enjoy the creativity and the juxtapositions between timelines. Glad I read it. Should another Rita Indiana title fall into my lap, I might be tempted to dive in.½

Die Dominikanische Republik wurde durch Tsunamis zerstört, der Tourismus liegt am Boden und die Bevölkerung lebt isoliert von der Außenwelt. In diesem Zukunftsszenario findet die junge Prostituierte Acilde Figueron eine Anstellung bei der Voodoomeisterin Esther, die eine wertvolle Seeanemone besitzt. Esther wird ermordet und Acilde flieht mit der Pflanze, die ihr die Geschlechtsumwandlung zum Mann mittels einer Injektion ermöglicht. Zur gleichen Zeit wird dem labilen Kunststudenten Argenis Luna ein Stipendium in einer Künstlerkolonie ermöglicht. Er gerät beim Tauchen in die Tentakel einer Seeanemone und kommt fast ums Leben. Beide Protagonisten verkörpern mehre Identitäten, die bis weit in die Vergangenheit zurückreichen. Die Autorin vermischt fantastische, historische und reale Momente zu einer undurchsichtigen Geschichte. Gewalt, Sex und Drogen, sind allgegenwärtig, die Gesellschaft ist verroht und die Natur insbesondere das Meer, dem Untergang geweiht. Eine Apokalypse, die in ihrer Vielschichtigkeit kaum nachvollziehbar ist. Für Bibliotheken mit experimenteller Literatur denkbar.

Relato del vaivén de la adolescencia cuando vives rodeada de mascotas sanas y enfermas, emigrantes invisibles que dejan huella, tíos de confesiones inconfesables, demencias de ida y vuelta, amigas del alma y del cuerpo. Y un gato sin nombre. Disculpe, ¿sabe usted cómo me llamo? Y una cierta realidad social dominicana como telón de fondo.

Alguien tiene que poner orden en este caos.

Rita indiana nos presenta una narración fragmentaria, hecha con un lenguaje fresco, vivo, casi reconstruyéndose en cada página, con la que nos sitúa directamente bajo la catarata de pasión, inconformismo y ausencia de vías de escape propias de esa edad en la que la indefinición es el aire que respiramos y la identidad la playa ideal en la que nos gustaría bañarnos todos los días. La prosa está llena de hallazgos luminosos (al menos para el lector poco habituado a la literatura hispanoamericana) y toques surrealistas con un punto feísta que a veces no parece bien colocado. Un balanceo con lija, una oscilación no exenta de raspones, que le dan al retrato una consistencia granulosa muy propia de las aventuras de búsqueda: ¿a quién quiere ponerle nombre la protagonista? ¿Por qué no termina de sentirse satisfecha con ninguno?

Muy recomendable.