As we continue to transit through the life of Monje’s mother, we encounter an interesting collapse of narratives. In the year 1983, “tu madre’s” year, chapter 1983 for Monje, we encounter the moment in which Monje decides to write the book the way we are reading it now. The moment in which he decides how to tell his family story:
“Sólo habrá un personaje y ése serás tú, sólo puede haber un centro múltiple, madre, y ésa debes de ser tú, sólo hay un ojo de huracán, madre, y ése serás tú.” (p.314)
"There will be only one character, and that will be you; there can only be a multiple center, mother, and that must be you; there is only one eye of the hurricane, mother, and that will be you." (p.314)
What feels especially mind-blowing here is that, as readers, we are not just reading the story, we are also reading the exact moment in which the author decides how to tell it (crazy, please tell if you have encountered this before in another book). The narrative folds into itself, the time collapses, in a way that makes us aware of the process behind it, almost like we are being let into the decision-making (being let into something so personal and intimate), the hesitation, the need to structure something that is otherwise overwhelming.
There is something almost cathartic about this. Instead of presenting the story as already complete, Monje exposes the moment of its construction, as if writing becomes a way to process and hold together everything that cannot be told linearly. The mother becomes both the center of the story and the reason the story needs to be written in this fragmented way.
Monje’s mother becomes the ghost itself of the family trauma, the bridge.
She is not just a character, but a site where memory and absence accumulate and return. A kind of territory that calls on others to listen to what has not been fully said, to what never received closure. In this sense, her presence feels like a demand, almost a call for help, in trying to make sense of everything that happened to her.
Maybe before developing this idea further, I should explain a bit more the role of the ghost in the book.
As I wrote in my first blog for this book, I believe ghosts are a kind of unifying character in the book. Monje’s mother sees ghosts everywhere in her childhood home, in the house next door, in the office of her dad. Sometimes, it’s not only the dead who appear as ghosts. At times, the living also become ghost-like in specific situations, when they interrupt a conversation, when their presence feels out of place, or when they carry something that cannot be fully said outloud
Even objects can take on this shape. For instance, the testicle that Monje’s father lost in an accident is literally referred to as a “ghost testicle.” It is no longer physically there, but it continues to exist through a joke, through absence, through the way it shapes how the identity of a character and the story are understood. Naming things like a testicle a ghost gives its absence another meaning. In this case, the ghost testicle could point to a form of masculinity that is already fractured, a father figure who appears fragile, incomplete, and in some ways absent even while present.
There is a moment when Monje’s mother claims that:
“desde que empecé con esta mierda [..] he vuelto a ver a los fantasmas de mi infancia.”
"Ever since I started with this crap […] I’ve started seeing the ghosts of my childhood again."
* The crap meaning the informal interviews Monje conducts with her.
Here, the act of telling her stories brings the ghosts back. However, we can also understand how the ghosts are the ones allowing/pushing?/forcing? her to speak; they surface so she can confront, narrate, and transfer her stories to Monje. It is what makes it possible for her stories to move from private experience into narrative, and for Monje, and the reader, to encounter and hold them.
