Bruno_30, blogger and contributor to the 20 Minutes Books reading group, recommends “La casa” by Eugenia Almeida, published on April 5, 2024 by Éditions Métailié.
His favorite quote:
“ […] – I didn’t ask you anything. – I know. But I thought we had to put pressure on them. To make things clear. – But you didn’t put pressure on them, Noriega. You put four bullets in their skin. At their home. And you made a huge mess. – Not punishing them, that meant saying that everyone can do what they want. »
Why this book?
- Because it’s the return of a great lady of Argentine literature. Eugenia Almeida was the one who gave us The Bus in 2017. An author stingy with her words with few and thin works.
- Because throughout her works Eugenia Almeida seems to have set itself the goal of illustrating the theory of chaos, that of the famous butterfly effect. When a small, ordinary and insignificant event will upset the order of things. Like this famous bus which one fine day in 2007 no longer stopped in the village. And what interests the author are the repercussions of these seemingly innocuous events on behavior, the chain reaction, the nuclear runaway, the consequences of the butterfly effect.
- Because you have to agree to let yourself be carried away by the very elliptical prose of the author who does not bother with explanations or descriptions. The reader will have a little difficulty at the beginning to place this or that character, to know who speaks, who did what, who comes from where, and of course who owes a debt to whom… But little by little the music of Eugenia Almeida sets the tempo and the novel finds its rhythm.
The essentials in 2 minutes
The plot. Two little thugs who meddle in what doesn’t concern them and get unsoldered. A car that should not be stolen. Not this one. Two or three small grains of sand, of an ordinary and insignificant appearance, which will cause quite a mess and cause the corpses to fall like dominoes.
Characters. A gang leader who runs a car scrapyard (the one in the title), a crooked police boss, a lover of old cars, a corrupt minister, a clairvoyant and a jealous man, cops and thugs… Very few will survive.
Places. An anonymous town in Argentina, plagued by corruption.
The time. Nowadays.
The author. Eugenia Almeida is this Argentine author, journalist and poet, who made a remarkable entry into literature with The bus in 2007 followed by The back room in 2010. There was also The exchange in 2016.
This book was read with a lot of pleasure in rediscovering the worked prose of this author and a lot of interest in the scholarly construction of this book, a real balanced house of cards. Not really a thriller, an urban noir novel perhaps, certainly a vitriolic portrait of a corrupt Argentina.
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