{"id":13916,"date":"2014-08-14T00:01:11","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T04:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=13916"},"modified":"2014-08-13T13:23:38","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T17:23:38","slug":"marc-pastor-barcelona-shadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2014\/08\/14\/marc-pastor-barcelona-shadows\/","title":{"rendered":"Marc Pastor: Barcelona Shadows<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hard-boiled noir often revolves around death, or multiple deaths and in Marc Pastor\u2019s Barcelona Shadows<\/em> (La mala dona, 2008; tr. from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem, 2014) that remains the case, but Death, that fateful visitor, takes a step back from his day job to narrate a crime novel. Death follows Mois\u00e8s Corvo, a detective in 1911 Barcelona, as he investigates the disappearances of children. The tone takes on an extra touch of sinister fun when Death offers the perspective, so that \u201cHe\u2019s got real balls on him, that copper\u201d isn\u2019t an anonymous narrator telling us this, but the soul-taker himself taking a moment to admire a mortal. It\u2019s a viewpoint that Pastor uses well and doesn\u2019t overplay. It would be fitting and welcome for Pastor to use Death in a crime series the way that many authors use the same detective repeatedly. In the second translation of Mara Faye Lethem\u2019s that I\u2019ve\u00a0read this year, she shows that she can bring two different author\u2019s voices into English clearly, distinctly, without tics that show her influence.<\/p>\n

\"Barcelona<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From the beginning, Mois\u00e8s is a familiar detective: he\u2019s visiting a prostitute, bitter, doesn\u2019t believe there is good in the world, but fights against the worst of it nonetheless. When the prostitute tells him that children are disappearing in the city, he doesn\u2019t immediately believe her, mainly because he didn\u2019t know the child existed in the first place. This attitude appears again and again in Barcelona: these are invisible children, so how could they disappear? But Corvo is the stubborn hero, fighting on to fight on, without faith that there can be victory. This suits the reader, because Pastor and Death don\u2019t hide the monster at the dark center of the book from us. In the earliest pages, we know who she is, know who surrounds her, and know the suffering of the children they are capturing. In that first scene meeting the monster and her companions, everything is bathed in violence, even sex: \u201cThe woman bites his ear and then runs her tongue along the nape of his neck, while her hand slithers down his pubic bone until it catches its prey.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cher\u201d there is Enriqueta Mart\u00ed, a real-life serial killer in Barcelona. While Corvo\u2019s pursuit of her is fictionalized, her biography and her horrors are not, her kidnappings, her involvement in the sex trade (both adults and children), her use of the bones, hair, and blood in witch-doctor remedies are not. Mart\u00ed\u2019s Wikipedia page is as haunting as Barcelona Shadows<\/em>. Though Mart\u00ed is the devil at the center, the book becomes a catalog of the crimes of man, as Death tells us in the opening: \u201cMen only know how to annihilate, negate, in all possible senses: to dominate and kill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout, there is casual cruelty and purposeful violence. Corvo watches it all while hardly blinking, as when he visits a man who may know something about the crimes and is able to talk to him like he speaks to anyone else in the book, this a man who assaulted children in the neighborhood, raped his own daughter. Corvo despises him, but he expects to despise any man. In this grim Barcelona, only the fools and the cruel find happiness, and sometimes Pastor\u2019s characters are both.<\/p>\n

There are times that it seems we\u2019re supposed to be surprised at the horrors, that the world could truly be this evil, and there Barcelona Shadows <\/em>feels duller, familiar. Readers of genre, readers of the news, know to what sick depths violence runs and there is little room for shock. Corvo is nothing new, so when Pastor writes that \u201cHe\u2019s no longer a defender of the good folk, because he no longer believes in good folk,\u201d it\u2019s little more than reminder of the known archetype. Too many reminders, and they become frustrating.<\/p>\n

The nadir of the visitation of tropes comes when Corvo meets the man, Andre Gireau, who runs a casino at the center of the child sex trade. The conversation turns to the usual evil man who does not believe in his evil and justifies his actions, while trying to convince the hero that he has no ground to judge from \u201cDon\u2019t lecture me, Mr. Lestrade. You are a policeman, and the police are the last people who should lecture on ethics and morality. When you beat somebody up to get a confession out of them, is that ethical?\u201d Does he have a vague point? Sure. But is it something a reader of noir has read again and again and passes over in boredom? Most likely.<\/p>\n

Barcelona Shadows<\/em> success in breaking from tropes and Pastor\u2019s creation of something new for noir comes in that dark narrator, Death. When Pastor writes his standard stake-out scene, dwelling on the boredom that nearly overwhelms the detective, Death shifts the angle of perspective on the scene and we hear this trope anew: \u201cI am Patience itself. I wait, I observe and I only act when intervention is necessary, with surgical precision. I am not innocent, I don\u2019t need to tell you that. But neither am I guilty. I\u2019m just another person and at the same time I\u2019m everything, because in the end, everything<\/em> reverts to me.\u201d In a book of violence and death, spectacular insight from Death is utterly fitting.<\/p>\n

This Death is not utterly passive either, not a narrator detached, high above the story. Death is not even on the side of death, but must be there when it\u2019s time. He can become a physical presence in the story, interacting with people, and shows a personality beyond observation. Death bonds us to Corvo, making him just special enough, \u201cwhen we look into each other\u2019s eyes I know he understands me.\u201d Death wants to be understood, wants to not be blamed for the murders of Enriqueta. Death takes pleasure in being recognized, even if he is immediately forgotten. He becomes attached to those who are able to know him. These moments of depth bring him beyond a narrative trick to a true character.<\/p>\n

When Corvo needs to stay at Gireau\u2019s corrupt casino without arising suspicion, Death works the roulette wheel Corvo chooses, and influences the drop of the ball so Corvo can win and keep playing. Death believes in Corvo, so we believe in Corvo. There may be no happy ending to Barcelona Shadows<\/em>\u2014<\/em>Death makes that clear in the beginning\u2014<\/em>but there won\u2019t be utter defeat either. Corvo is Death\u2019s hero because he is a man of will \u201cAnd will is the part of your souls that I most envy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The borders of reality are thinned by the supernatural narrator. When Corvo \u201cfeels a stab in his left arm, at the height of the bullet wound\u201d it is a sign that Enriqueta is near, and in a world where Death is an actual being, it is utterly literal, and believable. But with those thin borders, Barcelona is living city, and Pastor ensures it is a character itself. Barcelona of 1911, with its flaws, the figure of science in the book an insane man who believes in vampires, forensics just burgeoning, \u201cBarcelona is as quick to love as it is to forget, as quick to hate as it is to fall asleep, and what\u2019s today an insurmountable fear will tomorrow crumble like a lump of damp sugar amid the newspaper pages.\u201d Barcelona Shadows<\/em> is less the story of a detective, and more of a time, a city, and Death, and it\u2019s a better noir for all that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

P.T. Smith reviews Marc Pastor’s crime novel, Barcelona Shadows<\/em>, translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":13918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"P.T. Smith reviews Marc Pastor's Barcelona Shadows http:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-3Cs","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[655],"tags":[656],"coauthors":[640],"class_list":["post-13916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marc-pastor","tag-catalan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Barcelona-Shadows.jpg?fit=639%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-3Cs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13916"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13972,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13916\/revisions\/13972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13916"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}