AUTHOR: Miguel Ángel Oeste
PUBLISHER: Tusquets Editores
GENRE: Literary fiction
READER’S NAME: Danielle Maxson
DATE: August 16th, 2023

'I want to kill my father'. The shocking first sentence of Vengo de ese miedo [I Come From That Fear] yanks the reader into a frank, often disturbing exploration of family relationships gone wrong. This novel, written as a memoir, details the childhood memories and experiences of the narrator, who grew up with an abusive father and a neglectful mother, also a victim of abuse, who told her son the beatings he received were his own fault. Now a father himself, the narrator writes about his past in order to exorcise his demons and tame the overwhelming fear he grew up with while trying to be a better father to his two daughters.

The text is divided into five parts, titled: Father, Family, Mother, Daughters, and Father and Son. Each section explores an aspect of the narrator’s life with his family as he tells the story of his parents’ upbringing, their courtship and marriage, and his own childhood until his late teens, when a devastating event shattered any remaining sense of safety and triggered his decision to distance himself from his family and make a fresh start. Instead of using a straightforward narrative style, the author has chosen to interweave two plotlines. One is the biographical story of the narrator, his parents and his brother, and the way their personal experiences and actions affect each other. The other is the narrator’s description of his attempts to write this very book. As he researches the past, looks up old friends, and interviews relatives and acquaintances, the narrator uses the act of writing to frame and understand his own history while inviting the reader to witness his efforts.

Oeste’s writing style veers between narration and an almost stream-of-consciousness type of reflection that ponders both the narrator’s history and the ever-present fear born of that history. Fear, as the title implies, becomes another character in his story. He uses the act of writing to deal with that fear, sometimes to overcome it and sometimes as a tool to simply face and name his fear. Fear and the written work itself struggle for dominance throughout the course of the novel, just as the narrator struggles under the dominance of his abusive father. The decision to narrate the process of writing the book is a clever one because the protagonist’s interviews with other characters provide some mental and emotional breathing room for readers. Narration of these interviews allow the author to present some aspects of the family history from an outsider perspective instead of remaining trapped in the main character’s perception of the horrific family dynamics.

The author, Miguel Ángel Oeste, is a writer and film critic whose work includes short stories, books about film, screenplays for documentaries, two children’s books, and novels for adults. This work of fiction, which he admits is highly autobiographical, is set in Málaga, Spain, where he grew up. Like his other novels, it deals with the cultural milieu of Málaga, especially the culture of sex and drugs present in the 1970s and 1980s, and how a particular group of people exist in and interact with that environment. Choosing this novel for translation would introduce Oeste to a US-based audience and create an opportunity to translate his other work, if this novel does well in the US.

Vengo de ese miedo would certainly translate well into English. Oeste uses a universal type of language that draws on imagery from nature to describe family events, daily life, and the deep currents of emotion that run through them. Translating this text to English will involve several creative decisions, but it should not be overly problematic. An occasional reference to details of Spanish culture, such as a mention of Spanish lottery tickets and references to the type of currency used in Spain before euros, could be easily handled with a few brief explanatory words in the text, but the plot and characters will be recognizable in any language.

Although the narrator’s story is told with great artistry, the subject matter makes this book very difficult to read at times. Because it is centered on abusive family relationships and includes subjects like self-harm and suicidal ideation, adding a content warning to the translation would be advisable. The intensely personal subject matter, however, would find a home in the US publishing market. US readers respond well to confessional narration, and this novel fits neatly into that genre. Without becoming mired in a sense of the narrator’s own victimization, Vengo de ese miedo explores a story of abuse, but also shows the narrator’s fight to overcome it. Readers will empathize with the narrator and root for him to rise above his past.