Let\u2019s say you\u2019re in a car accident. It\u2019s not a bad one. You rear-end someone on a busy highway where traffic is crawling. And let\u2019s say the person you hit happens to be a wealthy woman who leaps from her vehicle and berates you in language unfit for the ears of small children. What would you do?<\/p>\n
Javier, the supposed name of the protagonist of Lorenzo Silva\u2019s novel The Faint-hearted Bolshevik<\/em>, finds himself in this exact scenario and consequently decides to spend his summer playing pranks on this woman, Sonsoles, though the word \u201cprank\u201d hardly describes what he does. For amusement, Javier calls the woman\u2019s home, lying in a variety of ways, all of which inflict psychological stress on Sonsoles and her family. <\/p>\n What kind of sick individual does such a thing? Javier is no prince, but he suffers in ways we can all, to some extent, relate to, which makes the story palatable. His job pays well, but traps him in a rat race that leaves him feeling like his soul is \u201ca dead weight down there, just below my nut sack.\u201d He\u2019s alone, average-looking, and his mother died years ago. There\u2019s no mention of his having family or friends. In our first encounter with Javier, Sonsoles treats him like trash. By the end of chapter one, Javier has decided to make Sonsoles suffer, and all this reviewer could feel is schadenfreude. <\/p>\n As Javier stalks Sonsoles, he sees and falls in love with her teenage sister, Rosana. He begins to lie his way into her (Rosana\u2019s) life. Javier and Rosana meet, chat, and meet again, and eventually they find their way to a swimming pool, where Javier has something akin to a religious experience when he sees her in her bikini. Finally, when Javier decides the pranks have gone far enough, he takes Rosana to a quiet place where he\u2019s about to break off their strange, illicit relationship, when something happens (I won\u2019t spoil it for you) that turns Javier\u2019s experience from revenge-as-amusement to life-altering-shitstorm. <\/p>\n In this short novel, Javier, who speaks to us as a first person narrator, is aware of his shortcomings, though he doesn\u2019t present them as evidence of his innocence. He knows he\u2019s guilty and accepts his punishment without any apparent joy or sadness. His sense of right and wrong is, in a strange way, what guides him, even when he chooses what\u2019s wrong. In choosing revenge, he seeks balance to Sonsoles\u2019 cruelty, though he miscalculates and tips the scales the other way. Indeed, plotting revenge requires two graves,.<\/p>\n The title, The Faint-hearted Bolshevik<\/em>, refers to Javier. The novel attempts to establish a parallel between Javier and one imaginary Bolshevik who, before killing a beautiful Russian grand duchess, falls in love with her. \u201cWhat a tender moment,\u201d Javier tells us, \u201cwhen the Bolshevik turns against himself and the Revolution to admit his already necessarily despairing love for the Grand Duchess.\u201d<\/p>\n Which brings us to the class issue. Javier is well-paid, but needs to work long days to stay that way. Sonsoles\u2019s life will be a long road paved with money and comfort. The contrast is clear: Javier is the Bolshevik, Rosana the Dutchess. It makes one wonder: Would Javier have launched his revenge quest without feeling some sort of class resentment (subconscious or otherwise)? He certainly has his views of morality and wealth\/poverty (\u201cA conscience isn\u2019t a basic commodity, just a whim of people with full stomachs\u201d). It\u2019s a question that lingers. The way Javier feels about himself certainly has something to do with what his job\u2014and, by extension, the economy as a whole\u2014has done to him.<\/p>\n Money, overall, seems to hover in the background, while the emptiness at the core of Javier\u2019s life takes center stage. As readers, we hope he fills it with the love he seems to need. In the end, though, we are left pondering Javier\u2019s final thoughts, as well as bits of wisdom he offered throughout the book, including this little nugget: \u201cThere is no more interesting believer than the one who changes faith.\u201d<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s say you\u2019re in a car accident. It\u2019s not a bad one. You rear-end someone on a busy highway where traffic is crawling. And let\u2019s say the person you hit happens to be a wealthy woman who leaps from her vehicle and berates you in language unfit for the ears of small children. What would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[54466,54436,7676,54456,1646,6516,54446],"class_list":["post-295966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-isabelle-kaufeler","tag-lorenzo-silva","tag-nick-caistor","tag-peter-biello","tag-review","tag-spanish-literature","tag-the-faint-hearted-bolshevik"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317856,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295966\/revisions\/317856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}