just smoke
just smoke is a contemporary novel written by the award-winning Spanish journalist and author Juan José Millás. The work was first published on March 16, 2023 by the publishing house Alfaguara. After its release, the book began to receive very good reviews from readers, obtaining an average of between 3.63 and 3.9 stars.
The acceptance of the work can be noted on platforms such as Goodreads and Amazon, respectively. In what could be considered the last third of his career as a writer, Juan Jose Millás has managed to spread a wonderful message about the transformative work of literature and the way it changes those who read it, to the point of leading them to create their own stories.
Synopsis of just smoke
A hug between reality and the fantasy of fairy tales
The novel begins when Carlos receives the news of his father's recent death.The latter is a man whom the protagonist did not know, as he disappeared very early in his life, and has only been able to return in the form of a disembodied figure who lives in an apartment that, curiously, he inherited from the son he abandoned.
The apartment in question has nothing but old clothes and used books, so it doesn't seem very special. However, from those few ingredients, Carlos tries to understand the man he never met, especially through the book on his bedside table.: The Tales of the Brothers GrimmIn this way, the protagonist has the opportunity to explore his father thanks to the readings he left behind, as well as trying to find the ghost of the person who decided his life among those pages.
The progressive discovery of the individual
The gradual discovery of who his father was or could have been is taking place among fairy tales. in the midst of Carlos's coming of age, who has just turned eighteen. In his own context, the protagonist is fascinated by the classic and psychoanalytic impulse to "kill the father" feeling the desire to conquer all terrain previously inhabited by his father.
That is how Readers also delve into Carlos's environment: home, love and family. However, as this happens, the main character encounters the cruelty of adulthood as opposed to the previous innocence. As Carlos reads and lives, he understands that the world he had previously idealized—the real one and the one in the stories—hides evil.
The thesis behind just smoke
The evil discovered by the protagonist is much greater than what he had perceived until now., even more terrible than the stories in the book on his father's bedside table, which he reads with great passion. At the same time, Juan José Millás builds a resonance between the gaps that the abandoned son is forced to fill, sometimes through the stories of others.
Other times, Carlos takes on the role of storyteller, and finds himself creating his own fables about someone who was never there.. Then a miracle occurs: in the absence of being able to explain everything, the author gives up a creative role to the reader's mind, so that it ends up filling in the spaces with more intimate material. In this sense, just smoke, more than a book, is a literary exercise.
On the proposal of Juan José Millás
The author's approach in this novel plays with classic fairy tales, both in form and content. In this sense, Carlos not only becomes the protagonist of his own fable, but all the events around him conspire to make it so, for example: his father's fantastic stories about his neighbor.
Another thing that makes the almost costumbrismo of the work fantastical is the love that arises as a form of revenge. towards the man who could not live it. This is a conclusion that is present on several occasions, especially through the stories, which become more referential as Carlos' story and the novel itself progress.
The cognitive magic of the reader
En just smoke There is a mix between fiction and reality which, at the same time, demonstrates that kind of cerebral magic that occurs when the reader finds himself irrevocably immersed in a story. Among other things, this work by Juan José Millás is presented as a love letter to Literature itself: as a social construct and as an object of leisure, education and introspection.
Likewise, The action of mixing reality and fantasy will help the reader to enter into some of the greatest interests of the literary biography of Juan José Millás. This, of course, through the splitting of the son—who lives in the world of books, but also in his own—and the supposed bilocation of the father, as well as the use of estrangement to approach the ordinary.
About the Author
Juan José Millás García, or Juanjo Millás, was born on January 31, 1946, in Valencia, Spain. During his university years, He enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, a course he dropped out of in his third year.Later, he began working for the airline Iberia, first in an administrative position and then in the communications office.
At the same time, he began to collaborate with the press. This activity brought him unexpected success, so the author decided to devote himself full-time to writing. In the early 1990s, his experience opened the doors to the newspaper El País, as well as other media outlets.
Other books by Juan José Millás
Novels
- Cerberus are the shadows (1975);
- Vision of the drowned (1977);
- The empty garden (1981);
- Wet paper (1983);
- Dead letter (1984);
- The disorder of your name (1987);
- Loneliness was this (1990);
- Back home (1990);
- Fool, dead, bastard and invisible (1995);
- Alphabetical order (1998);
- Don't look under the bed (1999);
- Two women in Prague (2002);
- Laura and Julio (2006);
- The world (2007);
- What I know about the little men (2010);
- The crazy woman (2014);
- From the shadows (2016);
- My true story (2017);
- Let no one sleep (2018);
- Life at times (2019)
Collections of stories
- Spring of mourning and other stories (1992);
- She Imagines and Other Obsessions by Vicente Holgado (1994);
- Tales in the open air (1997);
- The incompetent widow and other stories (1998);
- Tales (2001);
- Even, Odd and Idiot Numbers (2001);
- Articuentos (2002);
- Stories of coming and going (2002);
- Tales of disoriented adulterers (2003);
- The city (2005);
- Objects call us (2008);
- Complete stories (2011);
- Unfaithful and adulterous (2014);
- An impossible vocation. Complete stories (2019)
Articles
- “Something That Concerns You” (1995);
- “Body and Prosthesis” (2000);
- “It’s all questions” (2005);
- “The Keyhole” (2006);
- “Shadows upon shadows” (2007).
Non-fiction
- There is something that is not as they tell me: the case of Nevenka Fernández against reality (2004);
- Maria and Mercedes: two stories about work and family life (2005);
- A map of reality: an anthology of texts from the Espasa encyclopedia (2005);
- Lives on the edge (2012);
- With Juan Luis Arsuaga: Life told by a sapiens to a Neanderthal (2020);
- With Juan Luis Arsuaga: Death told by a sapiens to a Neanderthal (2022)