The All Saints Day Lovers by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Author: Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Title: The All Saints Day Lovers

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks 

Published: 2001

Pages: 256

Genre: Contemporary Fiction 

 

     A Colombian writer is witness to a murder which will mark him forever. A woman sits alone in her house, waiting for her husband to return, while he lies in another woman's bed twenty kilometers away. Through blood-soaked betrayal, a love affair, murder, and long-meditated revenge, Vasquez achieves an extraordinary unity of emotion, morality, and landscape with these fragmented lives. Achingly sad and beautifully crafted, The All Saints' Day Lovers is a remarkable and intense collection of stories that explores the depths of relationships, loneliness, and cruelty.

     For the last year or so I've really struggled with my reading. Never quite finding the same enthusiasm I had previously when I could spend most of my time away from work with my head stuck in a book. I worried if this was simply going to be it for me now struggling to get through a book a week and losing a thing that once gave me such joy. But then between Christmas and new year, something clicked back into place for me and I found that joy again. So once I had made my way through the few books I had been gifted I decide it was time to re-examine my to-be-read pile. This is no mean feat as that thing got away from me a long time ago. So having spent some time shifting through multiple piles and shelves not really finding anything that caught my eye I came across The All Saints Day Lovers. It was stuffed up the back of a shelf still with its discount sticker on the cover.  And being short in stature and by an author I had yet to read anything by I figured what is the worst that could happen.

     As you make your way through each of these stories you start to become aware of the slightly dream-like qualities. It's like slipping into the most perfect warm bath with your favorite music playing. I  know it sounds weird but it's the only way I can really describe the feeling this author's writing gives you. It's also funny in that sort of way as each of these tales is most definitely not that. They are the setting suns of a tale each time only catching the fall out of some terrible life choice. They are tales of heartache and missed regrets. People who too late realize there might just have been another path for them to follow and an ending that whilst might not have been full of sunshine and rainbows could have at least brought contentment. I suppose the word I'm really reaching for is a sort of melancholy but in a way that I have only seen from other writers from South America. They seem to have this knack for making even the most gut-wrenching and woeful of tales seem like it's an ok place to sit and wallow even if it's just for a little while. And Vásquez is defiantly a master at this writing style, the way he quickly lures you into caring about these people is a skill I have to bow down to. I wish I could be half as good as him.

     Whilst each of the tales had something that caught me I think the final of the book is the one that dug deepest under my skin, Life on Grimsey Island. Two lost people searching for connection and meaning in their lives. But as the reader, it feels like they are swirling the plug like a pair of desperate spiders trying to fight the tide of an enviable outcome. We cheer and fight for them to find the brief moments as the sun reappears on the horizon knowing this is no Disney tale. Happy endings are for big-screen films not sadly for this little corner of the world.  Once finished it took me a good long minutes before I could close the book and move away. And more power to anyone who can elicit that sort of reaction from me as it doesn't happen all that often. I for one think anyone who goes to pick up this book will have one story over the others that they hold closest. The author time and again within these tales showed what a truly skillful writer he is. And in fairness, it wasn't until after finishing that I looked up his body of work. I can only assume that whenever I bought this book I must have simply gone off the blurb on the back. But it does feel like that, he does deserve any credit he gets just from this one book alone. Which has got to mean something right?

     This is one of the books that I can only describe as having a romantic sense of sadness that pulses at its very heart. Tales of missed connection and just being a few seconds too late for something that could have made all the difference. As bold a statement as it is I have never come across a writer from my home country that delivers stories such as these. Vásquez manages within two hundred and fifty-six pages to get me to become a fan of his work. I would be more than happy now to go out and grab a whole lot more of his work if not for attempting to make head away with all the books I already have.