Parco

Author: Jordi Sierra i Fabra
- Fiction
- Anaya Infantil y Juvenil
- ISBN: 9788469807583
- Release Date: 10-01-2015
-Reviewed by: Eduardo de Lamadrid

Just by reading the synopsis on the back cover of Parco, the reader realizes that he holds in his hands a hard and forceful novel. Brief phrases and decisive reflections just before mentioning the name of the solitary hero of this story. "Parco" is the nickname given, without his consent, to a sixteen year old boy who has just arrived at a reformatory. Why is he called that? Because he doesn't say much.

Parco is reserved, but the street has taught him how to get by even in the most harrowing environments. Parco loves the classic rock groups, whose songs are always playing in his head. 

Parco is also a murderer. But why is he a murderer? What was going through the mind of this boy when he stabbed Topo to death, stabbed him nine times to be precise?  It may be that the answer lies in the bad hand Parco has been dealt in life... or it may be a secret that must kept at all costs.

While at the reformatory, the reader learns what happens around him, how he faces the world, how he counterattacks the blows that come his way, and his vision of his circumstance then and his circumstance now. The reformatory is a place populated by diverse characters, some good and some bad, who will in some way guide the protagonist to his destiny. And at the end of the book his real story begins when he comes to terms with his internal reality, a reality that is destroying him inside. And it is just before that end when the reader discovers why he decided to kill a person in a bar full of witnesses.

The book is divided into chapters, narrated in the third person, and into interpolations, narrated in the first person. The chapters correspond to the action and the facts, which are related in pared down exposition and in dialogue without dashes, which accelerates and simplifies the reading to a surprising degree. The interpolations correspond to Parco's thoughts, to what he believes and feels, to his hate and sadness. These interludes appear in cursive script and present a much more intimate voice, giving the reader respite from the breakneck pace of the expository chapters.

Little by little, in both the chapters and the interludes, the character and the story open up more and more, until the reader can no longer stop reading, he needs to find what happens next. And throughout the novel, one has the sense that Parco is not a bad person, that he did not take Topo's life out of spite, but for a reason.

Parco's story is very, very hard. His life has been no bed of roses; he lived in a dangerous neighborhood and suffered the losses of everyone who cared for him. The story of those losses is heartbreaking. And Parco, because of this, has withdrawn so much into himself and armed himself with such a hard, protective shell that nothing seems capable of penetrating it.

But in the end the author extends a ray of hope when he has Parco reencounter a person from his past. The question is will Parco see it or will he commit another outrage. And after that moment, after the good-bye and a few seconds of reflection, the walls of his fortress come crashing down, and he finally utters the cry, in the form of a petition, that closes the novel. 

The style of the novel mirrors the austerity and self-contained nature of its protagonist. Adjectives are few and far between. The narration is frank and full of slang, in keeping with the milieu.

 

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