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Rating: We are always escaping from something. Always and forever. The life in the suburbs is ruthless... there's no escape. But reconciling with oneself is a goal and Efraim is one of the few who knows it.
"Once Upon a Time, Love, But I Had to Kill It" is a novel published by Feltrinelli by Colombian writer Efraim Medina Reyes and it places us as observers within the suburban reality of the events in Bogotá and its surroundings. The novel is a collage of anecdotes and reflections, whose protagonists are not just simple characters, male or female, but the very numbness of a confused heart that fails to reflect its own awareness through a mirror and seeks answers elsewhere by getting into dangerous and unusual situations. The post-adolescent discomfort that haunts us for years to come, and the dreadful conviction that it might never end, the excessive ambitions of a group of idle vagrants with dreams of glory, women and rock n roll: being immature and making it a virtue.
The stories follow and intertwine like the deconstructed tracklist of a punk LP, guiding us through seedy bars, filthy streets lit by broken neon lights, and flashbacks of a life lived by instinct and love. Rep is a guy who draws despair from his heroes, sapping their arrogance. He wants to be a director but dances with the ghosts of Sid and Nancy. He wants to love and be loved but goes mad condemned by the infernal calls of Kurt Cobain. To start over, to truly know oneself by escaping all superficial illusions, without being martyrs of one's ego. Efraim Medina Reyes, in this sort of generational-flag book, magnificently interprets the iconoclastic spirit of the tormented man without falling into banal clichés or stock phrases, giving the reader (in less than 180 pages) precious gems of experience and very personal insights to ponder, free from dusty aphorisms, free from inhibitions.
"I will never think I am definitively in Bogotá nor will I return to Immobile City to stay. Both are one and the same in me and as long as I can go back and forth I will have an alibi. In Immobile City, they will think I'm searching for something and maybe one day I'll find it. In Bogotá, thankfully, no one thinks of me, no one gives a damn about what I do."
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