pagesofjulia

This is an astonishing novel that I’m so glad I learned about from my MFA program director, Jessie Van Eerden.

Signs Preceding the End of the World is a very short novel, at under 100 pages. Herrera wastes no space on setting or set-up, but puts his reader directly into the action, leaving her to figure out when and where we are. Without taking too much of that experience away from you, I will say that our narrator, Makina, is preparing to leave her hometown (“the Village”) and head north, looking for her brother who left before her. She is a remarkable young woman, nearly fearless, and comfortable with a variety of underworld characters in the Village, whose connections will help her in her travels.

This is a book about boundaries, borders; change, movement, travel, transition; and about translation, language. All of these subjects have multiple meanings, so that a so-brief little book with actions just sketched in, and no background, works on an enormous number of levels. I dearly love this layered style, where one border stands in for all borders, and every detail can be mined for implications. I always think that a book like this has something to offer for everyone: for the surface-only reader, all the way through the dissertation-seeking academic. Not to mention that this book has been translated from the Spanish (and to a few other languages as well as English), so the question of translation within its story is continued outside of Herrera’s own work.

[This is the place to mention that Lisa Dillman’s Translator’s Note is perhaps the best I’ve ever read (though likewise brief). She goes directly to the question that made me turn to the Translator’s Note when I was on page 16 of the novel, which is always nice! and explores the beauty of the book as well as discusses her own process. For readers interested in the puzzle of translation, this novel would be worth reading just for this question, even if it were not an extraordinary read in itself.]

The work of Signs is emphasized by its brevity, I think. Makina’s journey and challenges are archetypal, and I mean by that that she must stand in for a huge swath of our world’s population, as well as that Signs hearkens to mythology, and any number of archetypal journey-stories. The quick-sketch nature of the book helps to demonstrate or play out these facts. It’s not that there aren’t details:

Rucksacks. What do people whose life stops here take with them? Makina could see their rucksacks crammed with time. Amulets, letters, sometimes a huapango violin, sometimes a jaranera harp. Jackets. People who left took jackets because they’d been told that if there was one thing they could be sure of over there, it was the freezing cold, even if it was desert all the way. They hid what little money they had in their underwear and stuck a knife in their back pocket. Photos, photos, photos. They carried photos like promises but by the time they came back they were in tatters.

(I love the ambiguous pronoun ‘they’ in that final phrase. Were the people in tatters, or the photos? or the promises?)

Although I can sense the fable/archetypal nature of this story, my background in those areas, particularly in Mexican culture, is not strong enough to see all the connections. So, that’s a level on which I have more to study about this lovely little book. Easy to read, but will continue to yield meaning on multiple readings, I can tell (and as Jessie says).

Yuri Herrera is a talent, and Lisa Dillman as well. I am looking forward to meeting Yuri at this summer’s residency in West Virginia, where he’ll be a guest writer. Wish I could meet Lisa, too.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: in translation, Jessie van Eerden, misc fiction |