The Speed of Gardens is easily the most famous collection of short stories among those that aren't famous. Essential reading that no one knows about. Except for Alberto Olmos and four others. A textbook win-win .
Review of Gardens speed
The white hole in the adjoining page portends a near end. There are still a handful of lines left to consume; still, the hope that this tale has some end. But no. The story has long since ended. Like the previous one, like the next one. Eloy Tizón's stories die without warning. Or also: the stories of Eloy Tizón never end, because this goes beyond going through the hidden mystery between A and B. Like poetry, like painting, this is about contemplating leaves turned into canvases of words. Slow reading, constant reflection, permanent deposit and proof of posterity.
“It was a kind of hecatomb. Half the class fell in love with Olivia Reyes, all at once or in turns, when she came in each morning tidied up, barely powdered, she was a crisp, vulnerable vision that would hurt you if you even thought about it in the middle of the night."
Why call it childhood when you can call it gardens? The above extract is taken from Speed of the Gardens , the story of childhood and melancholy that gives its name to this brilliant collection by Eloy Tizón and also the text that, in the opinion of Alberto Olmos , “will forever be the best story by Tizón (an author whom Mal-herido Olmos once called “the best Spanish short story writer of all time”).
“For Christ's sake, someone tell me where the high clear days are going, my light childhood, my carefree youth. It was so easy to be small and bring notes. Little Austin with his little red pencil. Is there somewhere a kind of waste deposit where someone happily stores our happy moments? If so, I would call that place God.”
This excerpt could belong to the same story, but it doesn't. I'm sure you're already getting a sense of the prevailing atmosphere of * Velocidad de los jardines * (Speed of the Gardens ). The extract is taken from a story that devours you (seriously, it gut-wrenches you) where a man leaves the city to spend New Year's Eve in his car in an empty field. As in *La vida intermedio * ("If I'm any happier, I'll disintegrate"), as in * Villa Borghese * ("This is the story of a man who fell in love and his shoes grew"), the most recurring image is that of the party ending; the banquet with cobwebs.
The atmospheric and millimetric prose of Gardens speed
The Speed of Gardens is a sad and evocative book, where each scene depicts a withered, gray existence, entangled in the memory of a vanished happiness. A present hijacked by the shadows of a better past that will never return.
To compensate for the triumphalism (everything said so far in the review is intended to be positive) and add some crumbs to it: at times it is a book that is too... atmospheric, and you have to put your heart into it.
Furthermore, although Tizón claims he doesn't write for writers (which could be true), Speed of the Gardens begins with Letter to Nabokov and, in truth, it's undeniable that this story loses a lot of its impact for those who don't know, to give two examples, that Sirin was the pseudonym the Russian used to sign his work in Berlin or that Ardis Hall is the country house where Ada and Van indulged their passion:
“You who saw the sunset of a century reflected in the bell of your bicycle. Sirin, what a strange passenger. Among the larch trees in the garden there is an empty place, an urn of light where no harm is possible and I imagine you. Your magic lantern, Ada's library, the fiery transparency of Ardis Hall, belie that there is death."
But then again, many people (myself included) don't know what a larch tree is, and yet the world keeps turning. * The Speed of Gardens * is 142 pages of meticulously crafted prose and a style chiseled down to the smallest detail, where, nevertheless, the machine accepts the removal of many links. The stories have superfluous pieces not because the intention is to prolong the journey, but because the journey itself is the destination. It's about enjoying the stroll; the speed of the gardens.
PS: Larch ( Larix decidua ): A tree of the pine family native to Europe. It reaches about 45 m in height and can live for around 600 years. Unlike most conifers, it loses its leaves during the winter.
Eloy Blight, Outfield Speed
Anagram, Barcelona 1992
142 pages | 7 euros