The story by Daniel Galera follows a nameless character in
his journey to find out what happened to his grandfather. The story starts with
a short prelude that left me wondering what exactly it was, but by the time you
get to the end you completely understand and I went back and read it again in a
completely different light. After the prelude the story starts in earnest with
our unnamed lead meeting his father who tells his son that he is going to
commit suicide. While they discuss this his father also mentions the strange disappearance/death
of his own father while in Garopaba. Apparently the gaucho had quite a temper
and would often bring a blade quickly into any argument that he started. One
night at a dance the power went off for a short while and when the lights came
back on our nameless lead’s grandfather was lying in the middle of the room
stabbed to death. His father also asks of his son to have his dog put down, as
it’d be too hard on the dog to live without his master.
So the father does commit suicide, but our nameless lead
doesn’t have the dog put down. Instead he takes it with him to the small
coastal town of Garopaba where he decides to find out about the death of his
grandfather. Now this is a small town where everybody knows everyone and
secrets stay buried. Now along comes a stranger asking questions and not
everyone is happy with that. One thing I haven’t mentioned is that our nameless
main character has prosopagnosia (no, I didn’t know what it was either) which
means he is unable to remember faces (including his own) which is why the main
character remains nameless as he doesn’t even really know himself why should we
know him completely too? Of course this causes all sorts of problems as he’s
unable to remember who he’d spoken to. The book isn’t completely about the
search for his grandfather, as he’s also a triathlete who teaches swimming, he falls
in love and bonds with his dad’s dog Beta.
The book is beautifully written, I really enjoyed the prose.
I’m not sure how much credit goes to Daniel or the translator Alison Entrekin. A
few other reviews I saw for this book berates Alison’s ‘Americanisms’ in the
translation, but I couldn’t give a fuck that she used the word ‘preppy’, as the
flow of the words was just lovely. Raaaghh! Shame mine isn’t! I don’t know how
to describe the prose, and I hate when people say that a book was poetic as
poems can be so very different, so unless you’re meaning that it was written in
rhyming couplets leave out the ‘the writing was poetic’ clichés.
Ok,
so I can’t write, but this guy can. ‘Blood Drenched Beard’ is a great novel.
Moving and beautiful, you should definitely pick it up and give it a try.
