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abbie_'s review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.5
Free PR copy received from the publisher!
Another brilliant offering from Selva Almada, Charco Press and translator Annie McDermott. Brickmakers starts out with two young men lying in a deserted fairground, both suffering fatal injuries from a knife fight. As the story progresses, we learn how they got there, which includes a feud between fathers and an illicit love between two young men.
Another brilliant offering from Selva Almada, Charco Press and translator Annie McDermott. Brickmakers starts out with two young men lying in a deserted fairground, both suffering fatal injuries from a knife fight. As the story progresses, we learn how they got there, which includes a feud between fathers and an illicit love between two young men.
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In a great review for The Art Desk, it’s pointed out what makes Selva Almada such a brilliant writer. She does not need to explicitly state anything in her books. As the reviewer states, ‘words like homophobia, patriarchy and machismo are never used’, yet all of these concepts stand out with startling clarity.
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At 197 pages, no words are wasted. The chapters are short and punchy, going back and forth between past and present, the fathers’ story and the sons’ story. Both are equally compelling, and Almada shows how cycles of violence and enmity are passed down through father and son.
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It feels a lot more urgent than the first Almada I read, The Wind That Lays Waste. It’s different, too, to Dead Girls which was creative non-fiction, so not really comparable. The raw, unfiltered reality also reminded me a lot of Hurricane Season, which I also loved. Hurricane Season was actually published after Brickmakers, but we got the English translation of it before this one, but either way, both excellent books!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Death of parent, Violence, and Murder
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