Vicious by Xurxo Borrazas

Vicious by Xurxo Borrazas

Spanish (Galician) Fiction

Original title – Criminal

Translator – Carys Evans-Corrales

Source – review copy

It has been a while since I have reviewed a book from Small station I had a couple left that they had sent me a few years ago. They have published books from Galician and Bulgarian into English. Xurxo Borrazas studied English at university. He has since translated works by  Henry  Miller and William Faulkner. He has also published six novels This was his second novel. It won a number of book prizes when it came out in Spain. He has had a number of short stories also translated into English.

Chucho Monteiro stops at the side of the road Castrillion, by the ruins of ancient settlement. Carrying a green laurel branch in hishand, he has walked slowly uphil to the oak grove and is now sitting on a stone boundary marker at its edge. Strolling around the countryside in peace and quiet is something his body seems to need and is one of the activites that occupies most of his time. He tucks the branch under his arm, rubs his hands together to dust them off, takes out some tobacco and some matches, rolls a cigarette and lights it. From there he can see the Riba valley and firther on, in the Lendo foothills, the hamlets of Raposeira, Muino and Pitoquers sawmill on the road from San Roman to Nociela

Chucho you get a feel of the place and him as a person returning to his homeland.

A brother returns to the coast of Death as it is called in Galicia is the setting for this as a brother returns to live with his other brother. Chucho the older brother returning to his Younger Brother Daniel. He is settled Married with a child. The older brother left after he felt slighted by his family at times for his younger brother. What happens then is murder but what is clever is both the style Borrazas use it has an air of something from a different time Shakespeare is mention on the cover but yes there is something of that era about the story. Add to that the style of storytelling where we have a sort of swinging view of what has happened as we travel from the foregrounding of the murder what caused it to then the aftermath and being on the run trying to get to freedom. This is a tale of two brothers and a multi-layered book that we see at times from both as viewers and participate in the action.

Our newspaper brings you today the latest information on the horrifying events that have recently shaken Lacha, a municipality located some twent kilometers from Coruna.

Once again an iniquitous legend has taken a turn for the irrational with regard to a multiplemurder that can be described as a crime of passion nor as one motivated by financial or other reasons. It is primeval, instinctive act of violence that grows as it lurks in every corner of the shadowy nooks and crqannies of our villages and rural regions.

A start of a newspaper report into the crime and in has feel of place as well this place is old word in a way still.

This is a clever little novel it has lots of layers and is like entering a labyrinth as we try to find out the full story of the murder but into doing so we have to sort of seeing the prelude and the ending before we get what was the main act of the book. A clever if a different way of telling a crime but also at the heart of the book is the two paths that the two brothers in this book have taken in their respective lives that lead and in some part add to the events in the book.  A sort of preordain destiny at times we have a feeling they are trains on a track and the events in there lives are like stations on the route till they meet and  boom. I wish I had got to this one earlier than I have but it is another gem from Small stations who is run by the translator Jonathan Dunne. Have you read any Galician fiction?