Una naturaleza indomable y exuberante impone su ley ajena a la razón sobre el universo de los hombres. Novela erótica, fantástica, muy de mujeres, historia novelada de un Tabasco imaginario, Treinta años rescata las vigorosas tradiciones de nuestras letras con un gesto de humor y, al mismo tiempo, de crítica. La protagonista y narradora entra al mundo adulto por la vía oculta de la violencia y el amor. Construye su cuerpo de mujer rescatándolo del patio opresor de la abuela, donde la fantasía cabalga a todos los confines pero ignora la presencia de la niña. La abuela es la Schahrasad que cuenta, noche tras noche, los relatos que urden la red donde la narradora y protagonista vive atrapada.
FRAGMENTOS DE RESEÑAS
This is an edgy, funny and sometimes frightening book about an exhilarating and awful Mexican childhood. It is also an ode to the now-vanished secret heart of southern Mexico: its vast mahogany jungles and the constricted, tradition-bound, violent and yet enchanting smalltown life that until recently thrived along the jungle’s edges. Carmen Boullosa writes with a heart-stopping command of language. Her recollection of a child’s emotions is implacable and unerring, her sense of history precise. A beautiful work.
Alma Guillermoprieto:
Carmen Boullosa... immerses us once again in her wickedly funny and imaginative world.
Dolores Prida, Latina
Delmira Ulloa watches all these proceedings with a placid disposition and a wry sense of humor... Putting into question the very dependability of our realities, this playful novel aims to muddle in order to help us better see.
Irina Reyn, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
A lovely, aromatic mix of small-town portraiture and coming-of-age story, heavily seasoned with magical realism... So rich that we happily share with her the myriad components of her life, including the infinitely charming town she inhabits; her grandmother’s fantastic imagination; and the mysteriously absent father ‘who had been eliminated by the women in [her] home.
Erica Da Costa, Washington Post Book World
Raucously imagined... a meditation on family, community and storytelling... In her hardwon wisdom and courage, Delmira is... fascinating.
Carlene Bauer, Time Out New York
To flee Agustini is to leave not just a town but the visceraly primal dreamscape it represents... to leave behind its villagers’ peculiar brand of storytelling and mass hallucination and fabulist thinking... And finally, and here comes the twist, to leave fabulist thinking... is to embrace (in a suddent torrent of violence in the last third of the book) the light of Communism... Lush... the exotic glossolalia of Mexico is a sheer sensual pleasure.
Sandra Tsing Loh, The New York Times Book Review
A vibrant coming-of-age tale that proves that magical realism has not lost its powers... Boullosa [is] a master of the genre... Each chapter is an adventure.
Monica L. Williams, Boston Globe
A luminous writer... a delightful coming-of-age tale filled with the kind of exulting magical realism that seemed to have run its course in Latin American literature... Boullosa is a masterful spinner of the fantastic... and this story of a girl growing up in a rural Mexican town is anything but ordinary in her hands... As she weaves her tall tales, Boullosa unearths, layer by layer, the wonderfully crafted character of Delmira.
Fabiola Santiago, The Herald (Miami)
Treinta años pertenece a esa línea de obras narrativas que no llevan a remolque una carga de realidad para que funcionen como texto. En este libro están los elementos para lograr que lo verosímil no tenga que ver con lo creíble... este libro es la mejor prueba de que la lengua de Carmen Boullosa no se trabará. Y lo creo porque a pesar de la insistencia del narrador por establecer una serie de registros literarios, alcances, enigmas al lector; de ser un claro reto a las voces que quién sabe de dónde nos soplan cosas al oído mientras escribimos, el relato se sitúa en un más allá abstracto que no creo que ninguno de nosotros esté en capacidad de analizar sino tan sólo de someternos al disfrute estético que nos ofrecen estos mundos representados.
Mario Bellatín, La jornada semanal
Carmen Boullosa’s novel approaches its ultimate subject via a surprising plot device late in the book that changes the way the reader interprets everything that came before… Leaving Tabasco is actually a multi-layered narrative, challenging the reader to navigate a series of fantastic stories — the day no bird could fly, the day the coffee beans and cocoa pods fell off the plants, the day a woman bearing the stigmata of Christ dissolved in her own urine — and seek the truth, not just of the stories themselves (which may or may not be the workings of an overactive and fever-inspired imagination) but of the themes of the stories. Most of Delmira’s tales take place on 10 successive Sundays, lending them a religious tone, which adds to their mystery. The book is also punctuated by the stories of Delmira’s grandmother, a stern, unyielding woman, who recounts much of the history of Agustini as nightly bedtime stories. … shocking the reader into recognizing that real threats to society are far more horrifying than the most shocking imaginings of a young girl.
Rob Cline, Bookreporter.com
SOBRE EL LIBRO
Sandra Tsing Loh, "Están lloviendo sapos", The New York Times.
Sergio Pitol, "Una propuesta literaria".
EDICIONES
Treinta años, Editorial Alfaguara, México, 1999.
Treinta años, Punto de lectura, México, 2002.
TRADUCCIONES
Al inglés: Leaving Tabasco, Grove Press, Nueva York, 2001, traductor: Goeff Hargreaves.