Relatively recently I reviewed the novel The sun of contradictionsby Eva Losada. And this book Better absence, written by another author, abounds in a similar theme, perhaps clearly disparate due to the differentiating fact of the location, of the setting.
In both cases it is about making a generational drawing, that of young people between the 80s and 90s. The common factor with any other youth, since the world is world, is that point of insolence, of rebellion against everything, of yearning for freedom (understood this at the dawn of reason).
Without a doubt, a unique cocktail for all those young and restless people who have passed through this world.
And that is why these two books present that common notion, a complete temporal coincidence that identifies characters from both novels.
But the differentiating fact to which I referred before is that the youth of Better Absence are those who lived in the violent Euskadi of the 80s and 90s. What I mentioned before about insolence, rebellion and the dawn of reason was there a perfect mix to end up succumbing to that call to violence behind the shield of the ideal.
Of course, the reactionary rebels with the pretense of saviors of that particular scene, all they did was focus, orient those concerns towards violence, crime. The places where drugs moved were the best places to attract hopeless young people to inject an ideal to fight for.
Amaia spent part of her early youth observing her three older siblings. Those with whom he had played very little, were now busy destroying their lives, their family and everything that lay in front of them.
In the end, the moments can become eternal, but the years end up passing frantically. Amaia ends up returning a long time later to her place of origin, where she lost everything and where she had to overcome everything. But you always have to return at some point to the place where you grew up, either surrounded by complete happiness or absolutely marked. The good and the bad have to be relived at some point, to regain good feelings or to close pending issues.
You can buy the book Better absence, the new novel by Edurne portela, here: