Status
Available
Genres
Collection
Publication
Mariner Books (2020), 208 pages
Description
"San Cristóbal was an unremarkable city--small, newly prosperous, contained by rain forest and river. But then the children arrived. No one knew where they came from: thirty-two kids, seemingly born of the jungle, speaking an unknown language. At first they scavenged, stealing food and money and absconding to the trees. But their transgressions escalated to violence, and then the city's own children began defecting to join them. Facing complete collapse, municipal forces embark on a hunt to find the kids before the city falls into irreparable chaos."--
Media reviews
It’s a wonderfully creepy and authentically different example of Modern Weird.... Barba’s prose relies heavily on rich and poignant aphorisms from its sensitive and self-doubting narrator. I could quote endlessly, but a few will have to suffice. “Certain words possess a viciousness that can
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linger for years, biding its time, before seeking us out again, as intense as when we first spoke them.” “Loss of trust is similar to heartbreak. Both lay bare some internal wound, both make us feel older than we are.” “Chronicles and narratives are like maps. On the one hand, you have the bold solid colors of the continents—collective episodes that everyone remembers—and on the other, the depths of private emotions, the oceans.” They lend philosophical depth to the action. And Barba’s precision in describing the weather of the psyche—both the narrator’s and those of the populace and the wild children—takes the reader on a rollercoaster of feeling....Ultimately, Barba proclaims, we all move through enforced patterns toward unknown fates. Show Less
The book follows in a long tradition of blending the genres of crime thriller and novel of ideas, but in this case what should be hybrid and fluid comes off as formally indecisive. ... Barba has displayed an enviable gift for conveying, through an inventively abstract style, the strange worlds of
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childhood and early adolescence. The voice of this novel, precisely translated by Lisa Dillman, may have gained more traction if it had been channeled through one of its many children. As it stands, “A Luminous Republic” reads too often like a middling civil servant’s report: underlined by good intentions and promising themes, but ultimately unenlightening. Show Less
Magical realist fiction has taught writers that a no-nonsense attitude toward fantastical elements preempts a reader’s disbelief. Such an approach grants weight to the occurrence, grounding an unlikely event in the language of real-world reportage, which is especially appropriate for a short
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narrative that doesn’t really include much else besides.... And that’s the thing about A Luminous Republic: its melancholic mood and contemplative tone are interesting, engaging, and lovely to read. Barba is clearly a gifted writer with a generous sensibility. So although the characters aren’t as well developed as its premise, it remains a novel that thoughtfully and compassionately considers people and as a result feels utterly human as a whole.
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Wild children upend a city on the edge of the jungle in this lyrical, chilling novel from Barba (Such Small Hands).... The civil servant’s guilt and ongoing perplexity over what happened sharpens the impact of Barba’s spare, philosophical narrative. This frightening picture of the strangeness
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of childhood will endure. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member JBD1
Oh, what a gripping little book. Hard to even describe accurately, but the tale is beautifully told. Very nearly started it over as soon as I'd finished.
LibraryThing member stretch
What starts out as a matter of fact bureaucratic re-telling of a Cities killing of 32 feral children, turns into a commentary on power of music, law and justice, causes of violence, reality of childhood, the friendship of marriage, roots of language, society’s views on poverty, what is reality,
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what is truth. I'm not sure how exactly to summarize this wonderfully short exploration of one of our primordial fears: what's out there beyond our civilized constructions. As a novel it does so much more than tell a story of lost, uncivilized children, in fact they are more a backstory for Barba to explore far more complex topics. This sounds like too much for a single novel that is closer to being a novelette. Yet Barba weaves all his musings into the narrative smoothly and with ease. A Luminous Republic is like all the books in my connective tissue section, and not like them at all; it is not quite like anything I've read before. Show Less
LibraryThing member Lemeritus
An uncommon book of truths and fears that last beyond childhood.