I'd read prize winning Latin American author Selva Almada's The Wind That Lays Waste (read my review here TWTLW) and knew I had to read everything she's written. Brickmakers doesn't disappoint.
To open with the two protagonists (Marciano and Pajarito) dying, knowing at the outset how it's going to end, yet keeping you glued till you have turned the last page is the adeptness of a master storyteller who is thorough with her craft and wields her pen as sharp as the knives used by the two young men in the novel.
Central to the book are two brickmaker families where the men rake up a feud almost as if they need something to keep themselves occupied, and the rivalry is passed on to the sons, despite the attempts of both mothers to prevent it.
It lays bare the violence that is rife where life is an everyday struggle. The studies in masculinity, and the need of the men to portray themselves as macho is well wrought. The fights are almost orchestrated, as if the men were at a dance, each movement studied, it almost seems like it's an excuse to touch. Since gentle touch is barred to them, they choose another way, fighting each other.
The men are driven to prove their virility, and the homophobia that goes with hypermasculinity is well portrayed. Homosexuality has no place in these men's lives, whether it is one's own sexuality (Pajarito's) or one's brother's (Marciano's brother Angelito) and once revealed it can end only with violence.
The women don't get much of the spotlight yet they sneak up on you, with bits of tenderness. The lonely widow who tries to manipulate her son, the wife who manoeuvres her husband into becoming "self employed", trying to make the best of their circumstances, to provide for their kids. These are the characters and bits that will stay with me for a long time.
The bits of domestic violence (though not graphic) did throw me off and the sex was a bit too explicit, but nowhere does it stall the flow of the book. I was engrossed till the end. The prose is spare yet the book is a page turner.
There are characters and events which I'd love a follow up on, I'd definitely read a sequel!
5 stars. Must read!
