Null Island is where the Greenwich Meridian crosses the equator. At that point in the Gulf of Guinea, position 0ºN 0ºE, there is the so-called Non-Existent Island, where localization systems carry out countless incorrect searches. EL PAÍS journalist Noelia Ramírez describes us in Nobody was waiting for me herehis particular Nulla Island: he likes limbos, thresholds, non-places, that area of the beach where a thin body of water slides between the sea and the sand; that intermediate territory where there is no desire for land from the sea, nor the opposite, as described by the architect Aldo van Eyck. It’s a bit like this book. On the one hand, it is a chronicle about declassification, about the desire for acceptance, about cultural assimilation, about writing – and therefore about the authenticity, charisma and self-confidence essential to acquiring a voice – about us, the Charnegos, about the dilemmas of victimization and about what we expect from our lives, nothing less. “Honesty is wilder than cynicism: if I don’t like something, I say it; if I like it, I say it”, this is the credo. This side makes it a frontier book, a tear like Munch’s cry (“Almost Catalan. Almost charnega. Almost snob. Almost choni. Almost victim. Almost avenger. Almost mother. Almost writer”), written point blank, with an immeasurable anger: there is strength in anger, and beauty in strength.
But there is also another side. And on the other hand it turns into a book about maternal grief, and then anger is just one phase of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s plan for catastrophic loss—denial-anger-bargaining-depression-acceptance—and it works as a kind of exorcism, with writing that is like dark molasses, with that strange beauty of inconsolable grief. That final chapter is excellent, like that of the charnegos: we charnegos are like the dwarfs in Monterroso’s story, we recognize each other as soon as we see each other, as soon as we read the first line of a book (“In the neighborhood there are no surnames”).
Nobody was waiting for me here It’s not a perfect book – who wants perfect books? – but it is a powerful book: on the Nothing Island of faulty research, our newly minted writer lives in that suspended space of the not yet, where beneath the noise and fury she is about to give shape to her voice. Or perhaps he suddenly removes some angry excess and in some phases manages to cross the limbo, the happy threshold, barefoot, between the sand and the water, with that lemon voice that gives a tremendous, tremendous light to some pages of this essay, which is a sort of Samfaina. A ratatouille like her mother’s.
Nobody was waiting for me here
Noelia Ramirez
New Anagrama notebooks
144 pages, 14.90 euros
