Los caballitos del diablo
Tómas González
2003, Norma
178 pages
IF WE COULD all escape to Tómas González’s rural refuge and put urban chaos behind us, life would be so much more bearable. The Colombian author’s Los caballitos del diablo (The Dragonflies) – a fitting successor to La historia de Horacio – creates another parallel universe populated by exasperated souls and painted in rich, precise colours. Although this tale about a family living on the outskirts of a city might be interpreted as codifying the harbingers of systemic violence, González would appear to have a deeper philosophical destination, aiming to help us recover a sensitivity to our surroundings that we have self-evidently lost and are being punished for so doing. His concise narrative style stripped of all excess and his sensuous descriptions of the natural world deliver a message that, like nature itself, always remains elusive, mysterious, merely hinting at the secrets that await us. – EC
