In the Beginning Was the Sea

Thank you Net Galley. I enjoyed this book . The writing is beautiful, lyrical The book does not rely on surprises to keep you engrossed. You know what is happening, how and why it is happening, and you are still engrossed because of the beautiful prose. I shall definitely be looking for more of Gonzalez's work.

J and Elena decide to leave their frenetic city existence of drinking and parties to embrace the good life on a remote tropical island. But their dreams soon turn to nightmares as their hoped for paradise fails to work out. We know almost from the start that there is tragedy ahead. Gonzalez cleverly and effectively foreshadows the disaster to come without sacrificing any tension or suspense. We hear very near the beginning of the book of the room “where the corpse would be laid out”, and “the first of the two winters J would spend on the finca, the first of his last two winters on earth.” The sense of menace continues to grow as the couple try against all odds to make their new venture succeed and although neither of them is a sympathetic character the reader is soon involved in their journey.
This is a marvellously taut novel, atmospheric and unsettling, with a sustained narrative voice that never falters. The prose is spare with excellent descriptions of the heat and decay and native life on the island. Gonzalez is a Columbian writer and although this novel was first published in Spanish over 30 years ago this is the first time it has been translated – and very well translated – into English. It feels raw and visceral, and it came as no surprise to learn that it is based on what happened to Juan, the author’s brother. Gonzalez came to feel that only by writing about it all would he be able to come to terms with what happened. Knowing the biographical background only enhances the effect the book had on me – although it is by no means necessary to know it to enjoy this haunting and dramatic novel. Highly recommended.

It is the mid-seventies and J. and Elena have left their bohemian lives in the Columbian city of Medellín to tend an estate they have bought on an island off the coast: 'the original plan was just to move out to the sea and enjoy life, buy a little boat for fishing, a few cows, a few chickens'.

From the start the reader is filled with foreboding. As the couple set off from the mainland they find that 'the sea was not magnificent and blue' and that the water was 'stagnant water, rippled only by a slow, oily swell'. J. is an easygoing man who, 'glorying in the upheaval of his life', is prone to making bad decisions. Elena, meanwhile, is bitter, quick to see slights and disrespect in everyone she meets.

González makes it clear that this island adventure will end in a death and as the novel progresses, and as J. drinks more and as Elena's anger and resentment grows, the tension becomes almost unbearable. The combination of these characters and the island setting makes for a compelling and satisfying read

"In the Beginning was the Sea", was first published in Columbia in 1983 and is based on the fate of González's own brother. I look forward to more of his novels being made available to the English-speaking readers.

There are days when I suspect many of us entertain the fantasy of leaving civilization and moving to some remote tropical island. In the Columbian novel, In the Beginning Was the Sea, apparently based on a true story, author Tomás González creates two unlikable characters J and Elena who buy a ramshackle finca on an island off the coast of Columbia. The novel begins with J and Elena traveling to their new home by bus to the coast, and it’s a disastrous trip which is just the beginning of a bad decision. There’s immediately the sense that J and Elena are fish out of water who cannot even imagine the life that waits for them:

By day, the bus picked up passengers carrying bewildered chickens: at night, empty-handed individuals boarded the bus in dark, desolate places only to get off in equally dark desolate places twenty or thirty kilometres further on. Silent men with machetes slung from their belts and dirty, battered hats on their heads.

It’s a great quote which illustrates the menace of these men who travel without luggage from one remote place to another. Are they criminals or are they simply downtrodden workers, mired in poverty, looking for the next job? We can’t tell and as the novel wears on, this inability to distinguish between poverty and potential danger becomes an important factor.

Elena and J arrive in the ramshackle, chaotic coastal town and arrange a boat trip to the island. The town isn’t picturesque:

Parked all around the plaza were lines of Jeeps. Some looked new, but most were rusty broken-down Willys half eaten by rust or clapped-out Gaz or Carpatis. The newer models had metal driver’s cabs with small red or blue fans mounted on the dashboard while older models sported grubby statues of a saint next to the steering wheel and faded, patched tarpaulin roofs.

The dusty streets around the plaza would become quagmires in the rainy season. Traffic was heavy: trucks full with packages arrived as the jeeps teeming with passengers left. Garishly painted buses pulled up, their roofs piled high with live chickens, multi-coloured tin trunks and bunches of plantains.

The squat building on concrete and brick–mostly grain stores and seedy bars–were roofed with corrugated iron or asbestos tiles. There was no attempt at elegance or style; the walls themselves were grimy. The people teeming on the plaza were ugly: the white men were garrulous, potbellied traders with a yellowish tinge to their skin; the blacks, raised far from the sea and cheap fish, had prematurely rotting teeth.

The author doesn’t dwell on J and Elena’s impressions of the town, but J “threaded his way through the dusty streets” until “finally, he could see the water.” Meanwhile Elena is in a state of inchoate rage at the fate of the first casualty of the move–her sewing machine which was broken when it fell off the roof of the bus. This incident, while seemingly quite small, is indicative of the future: J, who’s left Elena to deal with the luggage, goes off boozing and gets drunk while Elena, full of impotent verbal abuse, rails at people who obviously don’t care.

Elena headed off to the shipping office to complain, where she was roundly greeted by a slob who insisted this was just one of those things that could have happened to anyone. Elena flew into a rage and curtly informed him that his company was shit. The man–who was not so much rude as insignificant–immediately agreed:
“You’re right, the company is shit.”

With a scheduled departure on a boat the next day, J and Elena must stay the night at a local hotel. Elena tells a local that she wants “the best,” and she’s told “there is no best,” and they stay in one of the many local hotels–theirs “reeked of cat piss, though there was no sign of a cat.”

J and Elena’s desires and wishes, and their sense of importance, are immediately eviscerated by the hardscrabble economy of the town. Their sense of entitlement and their self-importance are nothing here amongst the locals. There will be no special privileges, no special accommodations for the fastidious. They will eat food covered with flies and sleep in airless rooms just like everyone else. J rolls with it (helped by his alcohol haze) while Elena is obviously not the type to go slumming.

The finca is a “huge, ramshackle wooden mansion [was] built into the side of a hill.” It looks better from a distance. It’s filthy, has a corrugated iron roof, is full of bats & cockroaches, and has no running water. Elena’s earlier rage turns into cleaning mania much to the astonishment of a husband and wife team hired to work at the finca.

The finca comes with two hundred hectares and J’s plan to lead a simple life, farm and raise cattle goes wrong. By chapter 6, we know that something bad will happen, and it’s clear through J and Elena’s behaviour that they’re not suited for this type of endeavor. Elena is abusive to the locals and the servants, and J is busy drinking himself into oblivion. Their business plan takes a turn for the worse, and their initial plan branches out into a couple of other money making (or money draining) schemes. While it’s easy to predict that this will end badly, there’s no sacrifice in tension; there are so many ways this story could go, that the turn, when it comes, is sudden and brutal.

J and Elena are unlikable even “unbearable” characters–although J does gain some respect from the locals who clearly feel sorry for him being married to Elena. We don’t know exactly why J and Elena make this drastic decision to farm an island finca, but the novel gives us hints about the “wild chaotic life” they led “before they ran away to sea.” Life at the finca, instead of being the simple life of an island paradise, is hell for both J and Elena–she erodes into an ill tempered neurotic and in J’s case, he turns to heavy drinking. J has a history of being fascinated by “futile intellectual pursuits, which were a part of his inchoate and confused revolt against culture,” and he’s clearly attracted to the idea of leaving civilization behind and carving a living out from the land while rejecting a conformist 9-5 job. Unfortunately, J is a dilettante who’s inherited just enough money to get himself into trouble. The islanders lead a subsistence level existence; it’s a life of hard work, and it’s fascinating to see how J, although he expresses some “highbrow-anarcho-lefty businessman bullshit, that mixture of colonial, bohemian and hippie” thoughts, shifts his goals once he becomes a landowner. The “original plan” to “move out to sea and enjoy life, buy a little boat for fishing, a few cows, a few chickens,” explodes into a self-destructive, arrogant “bourgeois dream” which neither J nor Elena are equipped to deal with. Of course there’s a great deal of irony here as the theoretical simple life turns into a massive problem of land and people management with the bank extending loans that are impossible to repay. Pretentious idealism meets reality and guess which wins.

Translated by Frank Wynne

I picked this novel up on a whim after reading the blurb. There was something fascinating about it and the idea that it was based on a true story also intrigued me. I am incredibly happy to have picked up this novel and discovered a new author for myself! Thank you to Netgally for providing me with a free copy of this novel.

In the Beginning was the Sea is a really interesting read. On the one hand the reader is kept on the outside, observing J. and Elena as they live, and ruin, their lives, while on the other hand the reader can't help but become affected by what they do. J. and Elena buy their farm, or finca as it's referred to in the book, and want to live a life away from the materialism and fakery of the materialism that surrounded them in the city. Naturally, things don't go as they had planned. González has the ability to write about the nastiness of humanity and life in a tone that is beautifully calm, making the tragedy of his characters seem both inevitable and due to willfulness. A major part of this novel is the idea of reinventing yourself, of choosing a new lifestyle and adapting to your surroundings. The novel plays with the way in which the story of J. and Elena is told which presents the reader with a sense of doom about their journey.

There is something about In the Beginning was the Sea that doesn't feel comfortable. González was inspired for this book by his own brother's life, yet the book is largely devoid of overt sentimentality. There is something almost cruel in how the narrator deals with his characters, the lassitude with which he pictures their rise and downfalls. The reader knows much more than the characters do and as a consequence the book almost feels like a detective novel at times. The ending is, if not clear, at least expected, and it's fascinating to see how González works his way towards the end at his own leisure. The contempt shown by the main characters is one that is returned to them and in the end the reader is simply left wondering how it got to this.

Despite this being González's first book, the writing is stunning and has a clear voice. His descriptions of the finca and of the sea are beautiful and emotive and more than anything bring out the ecological fantasies of the main character. What I really enjoyed was how he would foreshadow certain events but then not reveal anything about them. González manages to keep the reader right on the edge while bathing them in beautiful imagery and writing. Frank Wynne does an amazing job at translating González's prose. Especially enjoyable were the words he left in Spanish, such as 'finca' and 'hermana', which added a lot of flavor to the book. For a long time he was known as 'the best-kept secret of Colombian literature', but it is long overdue that his books are being translated.

In the Beginning was the Sea is a novel that I won't quickly forget it. Reading it was almost addictive in a strange sense and after finishing it I still hadn't made up my mind about it. It will keep you on the edge of your seat for as long as it lasts, largely due to González's stunning prose. The book will leave you with questions but also with a sense of understanding which is hard to explain. I would recommend this to fans of realist and Spanish fiction.