Brickmakers by Selva Almada (tr. Annie McDermott)
Review by Jess Moody
‘One day his body will be big enough for the fury he’s lived with all his life.’
Two young men lie dying in a fairground. They hear the creak of the rides, feel the filth of the dirt, remember the puncture of their wounds. They’re not quite sure why they’re still there, why the sky is so white; why no-one seems to be coming to help (apart from their fathers’ ghosts).
From this bold premise Selva Almada unfolds a fierce and fertile tale of two warring families in rural Argentina. An intergenerational epic of complex masculinities, and the harms fathers can inflict on their sons, Brickmakers follows the dying Pájaro and Marciano through their troubled histories. The narrative flits back and forth in time to explore their respective fathers’ early lives, choices, and growing enmity: from a wrong look in a bar, to the theft of a dog; from boundaries placed on friendship, to the shock of death and revelation.
The fathers – Tamai and Miranda – are beautifully drawn, their own heat-stricken youth containing enough complexity to prevent lazy stereotypes. Their approach to women, work, and family are forged by different values and opportunities, even as they come to share the same profession: brickmakers in the same run-down but just respectable part of town. Almada conveys the urgency of their lives and the ripples of the feud in short chapters, pacy prose, and knowing dialogue: all in a seamless-feeling translation from Annie McDermott. The flashes of memory and interweaving perspectives build revelations which may only be understood at the novel’s climax; the next generation of young men preparing their whole lives to fight their mirror selves.
This is the second novel from Almada (also known for her searing narrative examination of Argentinian femicide in Dead Girls), who once again brings an unflinching feminist eye to her material. The men’s behaviour towards the women in their lives – wives, mothers, lovers – includes casual violence and objectification, yes, but also dependency and disappointment. The women themselves are permitted their own agency, whether in their careful take-over of a business, defiance of parental expectations, or through simple unapologetic desire. Sex and the physical is a grounding theme in Brickmakers, otherwise full of relationships where love is rarely uttered. Yet the undercurrent of homophobia and the fear of the ‘sissy’ builds to a final confrontation between the two families which is both tender and tragic.
‘He lit a cigarette and looked up. Even the stars looked brighter, as if they’d just been washed.’
Brickmakers is a rich, confident and urgent read from Charco Press, and yet more evidence of the publisher’s reputation for having the sharpest eye when it comes to contemporary Latin American literature.
Brickmakers is published by Charco Press, 2nd November 2021