Guano
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Bartleby the Scrivener meets Catch-22 in this charmingly sardonic tale of love, war and fertilizer.
WINNER OF THE PRIX DES COLLÉGIENS
Simón turned his thoughts to her daily. There were few enough of them, but each one lingered. He imagined their life together.
Sometimes even their children’s lives. Sometimes he set his fantasies in Spain, sometimes America, less often Peru – so many settings, all of which turned into the bedroom, eventually.
It's 1862, and Spain is a little rueful about letting Peru have their independence. Or, more importantly, letting Peru have the guano – 'white gold' – on the Chincha Islands. Simon is the ship's recorder on a scientific – okay, military – expedition when he meets, in Callao, the mysterious Montse. She asks of him only that he write her letters. Which he utterly fails to do. As military tensions escalate, so does Simon's unabated lust for Montse – even if he can't bring himself to do anything about it.
‘A novel that makes you want to read long passages out loud – or at least memorize snippets, just for the music of the words of Québec writer Louis Carmain.’
- La Presse (translated from the French)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This debut novel from Qu bec-based author Carmain is an elegantly constructed "story of love and war." The author relies on the Spanish lust for empire in the late 19th century to provide structure to this dreamy, lonesome tale. Divided into four eras one for each admiral who leads an expedition to South America the story mainly focuses on Sim n Cristiano Claro, whose love of words elevates him to ship's scribe and communicator. From the very beginning of the tale, truth and fiction converge, allowing Carmain to delineate how much history is rewritten by the winners. But history does not occupy a man's soul, and while Sim n attempts to impress the Spanish monarchy with sometimes invented details, he is also busy falling in love with Monste, a woman whose deep passion for words matches Sim n's own. Carmain brilliantly contrasts the kinds of courage and determination that are required of war versus those required by love, privileging neither.
