After years apart, three high school friends return to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where an intense love triangle once left an indelible mark on their adolescence. The city, surrounded by a ring of claustrophobic wildfires, brings out the past and confronts them with their present: they must once again face the entanglement of friendship and desire, the seemingly distant discovery of sexuality, complex parental relationships, and the daunting task of artistic fulfillment. In the background, two forces of chaos and destruction are a constant presence. As fires ravage the physical landscape, one of the friends begins choreographing an ecstatic dance inspired by the German expressionist Mary Wigman and medieval Danse Macabre. What starts as a coping mechanism for the anxieties of youth and climate catastrophe becomes an overpowering, all-consuming hysteria. Mysterious powers are awakened, the boundary between reality and myth begins to blur, and the friends find themselves immersed in an increasingly turbulent and uncertain universe.
The novel is atmospherically anxious, evoking the 'uneasy tension' of a world on the edge of disaster ... The fires provide both a backdrop and a running metaphor. Saldaña París is interested in inflammation and contagion—as in searing pain, easy gossip, sleazy pastors, catching conspiracy, smoldering desire ... At times, it seems that Saldaña París doesn’t trust the world he’s created to hold. He is occasionally uneasy with his choice of first-person narration, sometimes justifying it with flimsy gestures towards diary. He also has a tendency to repeat detail ... This is a book about growing hysteria and the flickering fickleness of shared realities—in this pervasive instability, it is perhaps understandable that the creeping distrust that is the subject of the book seems to have infected the author as well.
Poignant and compelling, this lyrical translation of Saldaña París’ depiction of youth foundering into maturity against the backdrop of chaos, hysteria, and destruction is a solid add for all literary collections.
Evocative ... The prose occasionally feels strained ... Nevertheless, Saldaña París executes some spellbinding moves, particularly as Natalia’s work fuels a collective psychosis. This smoldering tale is worth a look.
