AUTHOR: Vicent Flor
PUBLISHER: Edicions 62
GENRE: Autofiction
READER’S NAME: Alejandro Varderi
DATE: August 3rd, 2023

The parents’ struggle with behavioral and emotional issues in adopted children is at the center of this book. The first-person voice of Carles, the father, dominates the story, written in flashback from the time of Diogo’s murder to the days when Carles and Helena adopted him, after being rejected by other foster families. The sense of loss and abandonment suffered in his childhood determined Diogo’s actions, compassionately narrated, and dissected by Carles, despite the pain and despair.

The story unfolds between Valencia city and la Vall de Gallinera, a valley between mountains in the interior of the Marina Alta region, north of Alicante. In these contrasting settings the characters’ lives cross and collide, driven by a lack of communication and fortuitous circumstances, which isolate them and decide Diago’s fate. Other contemporary issues such as Spain’s political and economic crisis, the growing racism and xenophobia in the country, the pros and cons of social media, and the Covid-19 pandemic, are interspersed on the plot, along with Carles’ personal concerns.

This is a book that might appeal to a reader interested in seeing how Spanish couples cope with the burdens of maladjusted children, that have passed from family to family without finding the right one for them. However, the secondary storylines are too local for an audience not aware of life in a small city and in a Spanish rural area scarcely populated. Likewise, the personal anecdotes unfolding in the author’s semiautobiographical style, as cathartic as they are for the writer, do not absorb the unfamiliar reader’s attention, generating a void between the lines.

The book’s strongest point is the detailed description of Diogo’s gradual descent into darkness and of his inability to lead a fulfilling life, despite countless opportunities given by parents, friends, and counselors during his short existence. Aggression, depression, anxiety, sense of failure and neglect, identity problems, drag him down and increase the risk of falling into the wrong hands, as the narrator depicts, when in quest for answers to his son’s actions and erratic conduct: “En aquell moment odiava molta gent. Odiava la família que va acollir Diogo dels tres als set anys i que, després de quatre anys de convivència i d’arrelar, decidiren abandonar-lo, odiava els polítics que no havien creat les places de centres terapèutics suficients per què Diogo pogués haver tingut una oportunitat de rehabilitar-se (...) i m’odiava a mi mateix, per no haver fet el que estava al meu abast per a salvar-lo.” [“At that time I hated a lot of people. I hated the family that took Diogo in from three to seven and resolved to abandon him, after four years of coexistence and bonding. I hated the politicians who had not created enough places in treatment centers, so that Diogo could have had a chance to rehabilitate himself (...), and I hated myself for not having done what was in my power to save him.”] (p. 203.)

There is an extensive biography of fiction and autofiction on the topic of adopted children published in English: Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees (1988), Sara Zarr’s How to Save a Life (2011), Kelly Rimmer’s The Secret Daughter (2015), J.B. Howard’s When I Was Summer (2019), Christian Dillon’s Grace Across the Miles (2021), to name a few, hence, El carrer de baix might get lost in translation.

Vicent Flor is an academic, essayist and cultural administrator. He is the author of books on political and social issues. El carrer de dalt is his first novel and received the XLIII Joanot Martorell Prize. The author is currently working in the Sociology and Social Anthropology Department at the University of Valencia.