Goodbye, Chester Binder

About the book:

Starting a new school that has its own life and emotions; that is the challenge for Ángeles, the protagonist of this novel, which takes the form of a long poem infused with nostalgia about a childhood that has changed into something else. Together with her friend Chester Binder, she will revisit places whose echoes still beat in her heart. In this farewell, which is actually a new beginning, all genre conventions are blurred and the fleeting nature of memories is reinforced by the dreamy illustrations rendered by Anabel Fernández Rey.

Excerpt:

* To walk into

the house

that used to be mine

the backyard was

a stone playground.

My backyard

was the silence.

A boisterous sea noise

hundreds of kids 

bumping into each other,

how could they

be happy

so early

I

remained

fixed

paralyzed

barely a few steps in

just to see

if

it still existed

a little further inside,

my apple tree.

It still existed.

At the heart of that playground,

surrounded

by hundreds of those loud kids,

strangers.

What were they doing

in my house?

why did they dare?

They had arranged

some bricks into a circle

around the apple tree

so that it wasn’t

ruined

by circumstances.

I got closer

so slowly

and confirmed

that it was surrounded by

a lump of earth.

The same earth

my feet

had trod on

before.

A bundle

of kids,

three or four,

packed 

on that horrible

little wall

of bricks

to protect

the only thing

they had left

standing.

Me

and the tree.

The two of us

found ourselves

in what once

was our backyard,

now full of 

strange screams.

But

the worst hadn’t happened

yet:

the sound of a bell stunned me

it filled

the entire playground

for a long while.

 

Translated by Sebastián Gutiérrez - Edited by Laura Estefania