(Silence Splits) “Soon I will die. I’m not saying this because of the bird that has crossed my window (if that’s a window). Neither because the silence around me is almost total (at times I still hear white noise), but because there’s absolutely nothing else left to happen to me.” This is how this excellent novel starts off, so far unpub- lished, that can be related very successfully to the literature of the Latin American Boom. With the litera- ture of the 60’s and 70’s.
Journalists, murders, cops… The noir novel “by other means”, could be said. As in Piña’s previous novels, the prose in the book does not wallow in rhetorical twists, but builds upon image and reflexion.. Also, upon an imagination that knows how to dive in reality, in the present of violence and meaninglessness.
At odds with other current almost nineteenth-century-esque novels, in which biographies are depicted “clearly” and backdrops are too trite, Piña exploits here the traits of the novel as space for suggestion and research on the human. The reading of one of its best passages teaches us, as well, that stories can also be told through dreams and also through the senses.