The 3 best books by the disturbing Paul Pen

Sometimes the recognitions are a success. When Paul pen won the new talent Fnac 2011 it was facilitated that a new voice with personality and outstanding narrative proposal emerged with strength from the ocean of writers in which many other good storytellers dive, others more mediocre and definitely bad.

But the point is that when a new talent is promoted and it really ends up proving it based on what has already been written and what remains to be written after public acclaim, in that case the recognition is well worth it.

Paul Pen has that I don't know what capable of transmitting the deepest feelings of his characters with the most appropriate words or the most timely descriptions of the detail. His oscillating style, sometimes slow and sometimes rapt, is discovered as an authentic voluntary handling of the narrative rhythm to provoke some sensations or others in a suspense distilled as literary alchemy.

In the few years that it has been among the Spanish bestsellers, it has already captivated a legion of readers who eagerly await the last of its half-light imaginary put at the service of a unique scenography.

Top 3 recommended novels by Paul Pen

the infinite metamorphosis

Femicide as a paradigm of the bloodiest violence still circulating in our civilized world. The crime of crimes as a sinister right against the Eve who took the apple, always carrying the blame from God himself. The point is that revenge is sometimes the only justice, no matter how Machiavellian it may seem from the outside...

It's called Joy. She is nineteen years old and has her whole life ahead of her. Tonight she has agreed to go out with her classmates. She dresses in front of the mirror in the oversized t-shirt that reveals her shoulder, showing off her favorite butterfly tattoo. In the kitchen, she says goodbye to her mother. They live alone in an apartment on the outskirts, the first home they have managed to build after a past marked by violence. Now, after many years, they are finally at peace. What neither of them knows is that the kiss with which they say goodbye in the kitchen is the last one they will give each other.

Returning home at dawn, Alegría meets a group of men in an alley. An alleged flirtation escalates to aggression. At the hospital, Alegría's mother only arrives in time to hear the most terrible sound a mother can face: the last beat of her daughter's heart.

Alegría's death shakes a country outraged by the murder of another woman. Massive demonstrations ask for an exemplary sentence for the Descamisados, a nickname with which the press has baptized the group of aggressors. But the trial ends with an unjust sentence.

This time, Alegría's mother is not going to bow her head in the face of violence. Not again. Alone, she plans revenge against the murderers, inspired by the natural phenomenon that so fascinated her daughter: the metamorphosis of butterflies. To carry it out, she will need help. And she will find her in a group of strangers with whom she maintains a bond as unexpected as it is amazing.

the infinite metamorphosis

The house among the cacti

So far it seems to me the most successful of his stories. There is an I don't know what fatal premonition in every calm and peaceful scene, away from the madding crowd. In a kind of desert, among cacti and crickets, Elmer and Rose survive with their five daughters.

Life beats at a leisurely pace, reality passes with the cadence of time trapped between the barren terrain of a vast plain.

The arrival of a stranger named Rick, a lost tourist who is offered shelter and rest, ends up becoming a critical point of tension in the family. Perhaps Rick's visit is not as casual as it seems, perhaps the boy has finally found what he was looking for.

The five daughters are attracted to the stranger, while their parents Elmer and Rose begin to sense that something else that has led Rick there.

It is curious how in a wide space, with a multitude of possible and distant horizons, life narrows until it generates a suffocating space. Because the truth is emerging like dark water from a well dug in that wasteland.

Because it is more than likely that the peculiar family is not living apart from the world by chance. The problem is that the reasons that led them there seemed hidden forever. In the same way that cacti develop thorns instead of leaves to avoid water loss, the family blends in with this defense system.

Each character shows us an extraordinary reaction to some unheard of events that are precipitating in that calm but already sinister scenario.

In the book The House Among the Cacti we discover that there is no place to run from oneself, from unfinished business, from fears and from dramatic decisions.

The house among the cacti

The advertisement

When I was little we used to play a game (or maybe it was a guessing exercise) in which we fixed the age at which we were to get married, have children or die. I don't know what the hell we were doing playing such a thing. It would be boredom ...

Maybe Paul also played this game and that's where this idea was born. The point is that in this novel we start from a sinister letter received by young Leo. The letter informs him of his date of death. The start is unsettling.

But as the pages of the book advance, the restlessness turns dark curiosity. Death becomes the protagonist of the story for Leo and for other characters who try to search among all kinds of letters for the hidden message of a destiny that does not understand pauses or condescension.

A cross story that seems to compose an argument that escapes us, as well as, if we delve into it, the meaning of life and the coincidence or not of death.

The Paul Pen notice

Other recommended books by Paul Pen…

The glow of fireflies

Have you noticed how scarce fireflies are? In other times of my childhood, going out into the mountains at night could become a great sound and light show by crickets and fireflies.

The end of these impromptu concerts does not bode well. I bring back issues of childhood because Paul Pen with child characters has special consideration. Again we empathize with a little boy who lives a particular "life" in the basement of his house.

Until he decides to escape like Plato from the cave. The fantasies of his childhood seem to peek into the abyss of madness from the lucidity of some fireflies that visit him.

The glow of fireflies
5/5 - (12 votes)

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