By Citlali Bernal, NC Latina Magazine
Once again this Colombian novelist surprises with a new published work, in addition to the surprise deliveries of his novels around the world, to which we are accustomed and evidenced in: ‘A novel for each school’, a plausible initiative that I hope others will imitate. or support it.
This time the turn was for ‘Saved Stories’. Subcontinental social fiction novel that uncovers, using the brush of literary transfiguration, figure of its creation, the political, social, cultural and economic life of an entire country, today, any on the face of the terrestrial globe, every day more boiling and ‘infected with social nostalgia’, as this author often cites.
In this novel the protagonists are peasants, inhabitants of, according to the work, ‘the world’s largest wasteland’: Tobías and his wife Abigail. This, a splendid and sensual paramuna, even when she gets older and even old. The two were born, raised, met, fell in love, got married, had their children and had adventures there in the moor, where they consolidated some wealth that they took from the ground.
Everything went well between Tobias and Abigail… relatively, until they reached old age, when their children refused to take care of them and watch over them in their town. So, they uprooted them from their roots and took them away and left them alone and almost to their fate in a house located in the gutters of the cold and impersonal capital city of that country.
From one moment to the next, when they were most ill and needed help, which their relatives avoided and evaded in some displaced way, not always with kind words or friendly gestures, a minimum appeared out of nowhere which the stubborn old man called Stains and He adopted it as a pet. Much to the spite of Abigail’s grumbling, who wanted to scare him away, even kill him, which the cunning cat avoided several times.
Manchas soon became the repository of the stories that boiled in the senile moímora of Tobías, who shared them when he got into song. Not only did he tell her about his ladylike adventures when he was young, even after turning gray, as well as the three times that his beloved Abigail was unfaithful to him and that he assumed without saying anything to her, or to anyone. Because she considered that those slips were barely fair, like a refined feminine revenge for the fact that he made her suffer and the infinity of times that he betrayed her; even one of Abigail’s closest and dearest cousins…for many years.
In addition to these stories, Tobías also told his cat some related to the hidden and recast life of the country. In particular, those that had to do with the covert activities of the fearsome and feared doctor Abelardo Uribia Morales. Shady former president whom no one, not even justice, under its oiled springs, dared to touch or point it out, given the real and lethal risk that this implied.
Once the former president found out that the famous cat knew part of his rough life covered up, according to Tobías in some interviews he gave, he put a price on the head of the small but elusive feline.
When the two old men died of old age in a charity hospital, three hours apart, as they had promised to do since they were dating, Manchas disappeared from that mansion before the arrival of the guards sent by the nameless ex-president to discharge him. The cat returned to its origins where the paramuna premonition turned it into a legend, at the time of the verses of Predestination .
The reading of this new short novel by Enciso is agile, pleasant and full of shocks that will keep the reader hooked between its pages, from beginning to end, or at least until when, perhaps, the last official who wanted to find Manchas in compliance After the tantrums of the old ex-president, apparently he was the victim of the curse that Tobias imposed on those slopes to keep sealed forever the secret of his beloved Abigail’s infidelity… apparently!
Wilson Rogelio Enciso : success with this new work, with the others published and with the ones that we know are still stored in some corner of his studio, ready to be published!
All his works are available on Amazon.com and Autoreseditores.com , as well as his subcontinental stories in the pages of our Latina NC Magazine , where he is a permanent columnist.
Thank you, Wilson Rogelio Enciso for your lyrics. From Revista Latina NC we recommend its reading and dissemination.