La puta que leía a Jack Kerouac, by Susana Hernández.
The meeting between a writer and a young prostitute gradually opens the door to a murky story, in which all the characters have something to reproach each other. All of them, at some point, have let themselves be carried away by their instincts, by their passions, by their resentments, too, and by their hatred. It is soon realized that, beneath the appearance of normality that a young couple expecting their first child can give, there is a dark, sordid drive, a drive that explodes when the young prostitute suddenly appears cruelly murdered one day.
A novel of emotions, a contained novel, of suggestions more than explanations, in which the dialogues, masterfully handled in just the right measure by the author, all carry a charge of hinted depth. No look is innocent in “La puta que leía a Jack Kerouac”, no capricious gesture. The result is a true novelistic waste of fair, precise words, with which to show the dark side that we all keep inside us since the day, for example, when we went up the stairs happy to return home and, when we opened the door, we found that image that we would never want to have seen. Narrated with the concise style, with a preponderance of dialogue that appears agile and simple but loaded with depth that already surprised us in “La puta que leía a Jack Kerouac”, this novel by Susana Hernández, awarded with a narrative award, is a bet of great literary weight on how to tell a story without unnecessary additions and directly to the reader’s sensitivity. Not in vain does it contain, written with the greatest austerity, some of the most chilling scenes that the reader has ever encountered.
Necesitamos más autoras como Susana Hernández, con personajes fuertes y apegados a la realidad, con mujeres auténticas y no de catálogo, con problemas verídicos y no impostados, con inquietudes actuales y no del siglo XIX. Un ejemplo a seguir.
(Leersinprisa.blogspot)
Susana toca los sentimientos con una varita mágica.
(laschicasbritt.blogspot)
Susana Hernández ama la literatura, y se nota.
(Antonio Gómez Rufo)