“I can say about myself that I never learned from anyone who wore clean nails.” The narrator’s confession, the very Juan Lobón, appears at the opening of this novel, the debut work by Luis Berenguer (Ferrol, 1923 – San Fernando, 1979), which Libros del Asteroide has brought back with notable fidelity. The World of Juan Lobón keeps speaking of matters we should not forget, such as the structures of class and their relation to the farce of living. Although its initial aim, as one can infer from the quoted line, is to carve out the voice of a character ready to square accounts. Berenguer crafts a poacher who finds loyalty only in his shotgun and cannot understand that life might exist beyond the mountains. What humans have created is alive, because it moves, but to call that life would be to cross a chasm. With the voice of this man, a simple fellow who points toward forms of knowledge that feel foreign to us, toward moral principles it seems he does not share with anyone, Berenguer builds a novel of linked events, situated in a concrete place, with performances that sketch the protagonists.
“Juan Lobón speaks to us with the awareness of being the sole protagonist of a marginal world, which will surely end when he disappears.”
What first grabs attention is the sheer force of the voice that is being created, evident in every paragraph and never faltering: “Don Gumersindo was waiting for me in the large room on the left as you enter, and upon seeing him there, with so much light, so much luxury, and such a stern face, I felt a little death.” It is a passage that shows how Juan Lobón exemplifies the way in which the ascent toward a refined sensitivity and the descent into the common stock of dirty men can become entangled. In essence, he is a natural observer, and this stylistic, almost autobiographical device serves to sketch the people, one by one, until the reader’s mind constructs a whole society that seems isolated, as if on the frontier of a region. Here violence enforces the law, and the law is dictated by those who wield it; it does not come from any institution. Juan Lobón speaks with the consciousness of being the lone protagonist of a marginal world that will likely end with his disappearance. That moral weight keeps the narrative steady in this realist work, where the characters are prey to the most credible emotion imaginable: fear.
“We are in a world from several decades ago, which, of course, means that the reading from that time is not identical to what we can do now, in which a documentary-like feel often dominates.”
Lobón endures beatings and remains determined that nothing about his way of living is less than sincere. He could be a rogue if he possessed a bit more cunning, but all his wit is directed toward a single reality: the hunt. Consequently, he would completely distrust people if he did not have to live among them. The novel is not built on a traditional plot so much as on that voice that gives unity to the events. One might wonder how much of this work is a product of imagination on Berenguer’s part and how much stems from documentary labor, because the result is as startling as it is thoroughly plausible. We are perched in a world from many decades past, a fact that means the reading of the time differs from what we might extract today, where a documentary flavor often underlines the narration; we observe the tale as if it were a historical account. Yet this is not a drawback; on the contrary, it reinforces the sense that the real history lies not in textbooks or encyclopedia entries, but in the portraits of people who would have remained anonymous were it not for authors like Luis Berenguer, whose work we nonetheless continue to appreciate as a testimonial labor. That alone would seem sufficient to justify reading this novel. But The World of Juan Lobón offers much more: it delivers power while continually surprising the reader at every turn. It is a novel we are unlikely to forget.
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Author: Luis Berenguer. Title: The World of Juan Lobón. Publisher: Libros del Asteroide. Availability: Todos tus libros.