Guest Essay
This essay was written by Alberto de la Rosa, director of the blog Igual pero distinto.
It is reproduced in Book&Bilias with the author’s permission.
While this is not meant as a literary critique, I will address William Castaño-Bedoya’s book from my impressions as a reader – isn’t that the way it should always be? – and set aside some of the things that writers worry about so much, such as form (which concerns mostly style editors). The important thing, I believe, is what his writing transmits; the way it’s built; the singularity of his characters; and especially, the connection with our own existence, an unavoidable accident that always occurs in the midst of a love story… or a story about lovelessness:
Flowers for María Sucel is not — as I have heard it described — a regionalist essay about Quindío. If anything, it might belong to the old Caldas region or even to the inhospitable Bogotá of the mid-twentieth century: the city that welcomed its new inhabitants while quietly making them disappear; the city without a face; the city that teaches the simplest truths of life with unrelenting rigor and that, once you surrender to it, keeps you in a state of permanent exile.
No, that is not an accurate description of the book. Geography is merely the stage upon which a deeply human drama unfolds around its characters. Like life itself, they struggle within their own contradictions… the path is never straight.
The tragedy of the cells we build around ourselves is that they eventually become impossible to escape. Gilberto and María Sucel realized this too late, for in their stubborn determination to become what they believed they were supposed to be, they allowed the immutability of their beliefs and circumstances to defeat them — something that, nevertheless, never extinguished their love. It is the kind of misunderstood fidelity many of us experience and that, despite everything, remains real and irrevocable.
This book speaks of the frailty and weakness of our passage through the world, as well as of the adversity and encounters that shape us — or deform us. Living is a risky endeavor… no one is immune. Yet in the long trials of life there is time for everything: forgiveness, correction, even redemption. In some way the characters sensed this, although they did not know — or were unable — to seize the moment. It was easier to fall into that closed world that sometimes traps us: the solitude to which we eventually surrender.
Even so, the triumph of persistence becomes inevitable when we are moved by higher values. Loyalty has more to do with the spirit than with the flesh, and both characters bear witness to this.
The story moves us because it reflects, without mitigation, what we are. It is a mirror, and therefore we can see our own image within its words. Some people are fortunate enough to be born with clear parameters that make their path easier; others must find their way through stumbles, mistakes, and repeated attempts. Gilberto belongs to the latter group, which only deepens his complexity and value as both a human being and a literary character.
Finally — being careful not to ring unnecessary bells — I must say that among the passages that impress most for their craftsmanship and beauty is the grocery list María Sucel prepares for Gilberto. That moment, together with the book’s final line, completes the essence of this story… and of the characters themselves.
The acrostic, skillfully constructed and introduced at precisely the right moment, is so unexpected, intelligent, and meaningful that the explanation that follows in the text becomes almost unnecessary: the reader already possesses enough elements to decipher it and keep it as a memorable moment of revelation. Even so, it remains an admirable passage — one of those moments that the reader encounters again and again throughout Flowers for María Sucel.