At the beginning of the novel, we have the impression of being immersed in a story of exile, or several exiles. An English writer, accompanied by her family, goes in search of a white rock, a sacred place of the Wixarikas tribe to which they attribute the origin of the world, and where votive offerings are regularly released by believers from all over the world. The scene takes place in the confines of Mexico in 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic crisis, and yet we have the curious impression that times are intertwined. The conversations flow, without punctuation, as if it were already a memory. The contemporary mingles with the Holocene, with immemorial times when the shamans already, the Mara‘akame, developed their knowledge. The chronology of the book seems constructed like a musical score with the white rock where everything converges as its acme, described in a short poem which appears in the center of the book and constitutes its cornerstone. The plot offers a round trip around this place, an epic over several centuries, which could easily be adapted into a film as it seems that the author zooms in and out, camera on his shoulder.
We meet a singer inspired directly by Jim Morrison, in the 60s, pacifist and alcoholic in this period of the Vietnam War; a young yoemen girl who tries to flee the plantations where they are destined for slavery in the Yucatán peninsula, in the company of her sister. In 1775, we embarked on the Spanish ship of Juan de Ayala the lieutenant, recognized for having been the first to map the bay of San Francisco. And yet, despite these leaps through the ages, the impersonal way of naming these characters in each chapter, the author’s heightened focus on their inner thoughts seems to encompass them as a whole. A few elements common to each story increase the porosity of its periods, whether it is a brand of beer, El Pacifico, or the sense of touch, particularly present throughout the book.
Moreover, the novel closes with the term “feet”, which, in addition to adding to the sensual and thereby universal dimension, appears as a tribute to the ancestral beliefs of the indigenous populations of this region. Indeed, the Yaquis or Yoeme tribe has a perception of the world particularly rooted in the land. The world would be divided into four: the animal world, the world of people, the world of flowers and the world of the dead; and most of their rituals are devoted to perfecting these worlds. This reconnection to nature is offered as a spiritual alternative to the anguish that can affect everyone faced with the inevitability of death. A writing brilliantly revealed by the translator Élodie Leplat, who transmits to us her style that is both modest and charged with energy.
Laura Legeay
To be released on 08/18: The White Rock by Anna Hope (Editions Le Bruit du Monde).