Many people have to die
Many people have to die is the debut feature in the novel genre by the Spanish comedian and screenwriter Victoria Martín. The work in question took the author two years, more than because of her personal obligations, because of the great respect she feels for literature. So, once completed, the text was published by the Plaza & Janés publishing house on October 20, 2022. It is a fiction full of humor, but also everyday and impudence.
Victoria Martín's first literary title it's a breath of fresh air among all the toxic positivity. The work itself is not in charge of making a statement on how to face and get out of day-to-day problems, but rather to create awareness about a problem that becomes more real with each passing day: inaction. Bad things happen, but they don't do it alone, you have to help them, get up from your chair and do something.
Synopsis of Many people have to die
Barbara and the anxiolytics
Many people have to die It is told from Barbara's point of view. a script assistant who works for a television show. His group of collaborators are mostly men, and they consider themselves very funny. The work environment is increasingly tense. To overcome it, Barbara becomes addicted to anxiolytics, while she sees how her entire life is dangerously inclined towards emotional, mental and physical misery.
At the same time, the woman is obsessed with earning money and stabilizing her situation. But her approach to excessive capitalism is very slight, especially since Barbara does not take forceful action to change. The people around her are also not helpful. The protagonist lives with Maca, her lifelong friend, who is a failed actress.
Elena and the escape
Another small step in Barbara's supposed rise to stability is attending the baby shower Elena's baby, another of her school friends. The main character has a strange idea about this event. The reason for her to go is based, fundamentally, on the fact that she thinks that all the ritual around the new member of Elena's family will be able to vindicate her own path towards a more prosperous adulthood.
However, Things don't go as Bárbara plans, because, at the end of the party, the pregnant woman leaves her husband and flees with the protagonist and Maca to her apartment. This fact transforms the already unstable dynamics of the cohabitants, and little by little destroys what they considered an unbreakable friendship. Some time later, another woman arrives at the house and ends up burying the relationship between all the tenants.
Fabiola and the jewels of Bangladesh
Fabiola is the last friend to join the emotional collision that the apartment has become. Now a frustrated screenwriter must coexist, an actress who does not stop accumulating failures, a woman near term who suffers from cyclothymia, as well as an unreliable influencer of sorts who runs a large account of jewelery made by children in Bangladesh.
Fabiola usually suffers from that so-called toxic positivism, where inspiring phrases are posted to Instagram, but in real life nothing of the previously professed is executed. Over time, small daily problems give way to something bigger, yet no one talks about the elephant in the room until it's too late.
In sum, Many people have to die is the story of four friends who meet again to discover that they no longer have anything in common.
Beyond the passage of time
The aforementioned is hard, yes, but Victoria Martín is an expert in providing humor and irony to her bloodiest scenes. Most of the stories reach the reader through the protagonist, their dialogues and their internal monologues loaded with social satire and politics.
Throughout the novel it is possible to realize how disenchanted the four friends are with their respective lives. But, Despite the disagreements, the selfishness and the failures, Fabiola, Elena, Maca and Bárbara have each other.
A grim ending, but realistic
Many people have to die es a social criticism about those self-help books that promise absolute and infinite happiness. And yes, to those texts that affirm that, at the end of their pages, it is possible to find the end of the rainbow. This is the reason why the culmination of the novel is… a bit grey. After all the dramas narrated in the work, the labor and personal conflicts, the author is expected to save the protagonist.
However, the book does not go in that direction. Victoria Martín does not build a journey with bright goals for her main character and her friends. There is no elevation to bliss after chaos, but in such a case, you confiscate them to take small steps to change the rules of your own life.
For example: Elena, despite not wanting to be married or to be a mother, returns to her husband. On the other hand, Barbara assures that she will be there for her when she decides to divorce in a few years, while she takes another anxiolytic to her lips. Because change is not easy, it requires time, effort, willingness, and years of therapy.
About the author, Victoria Martín
victoria martin
Victoria Martín de la Cova was born in 1989, in Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Spain. She is a well-known comedian, screenwriter, journalist and presenter of Spanish television and radio. Martin He graduated in journalism from the Rey Juan Carlos University. Later he completed a master's degree in scriptwriting for film and TV, complementing his education through specialized courses in Web Analytics and Digital Advertising.
Victoria Martín is famous for presenting programs such as Yu: Don't miss anything, whose main character was the same one that he played on a YouTube channel that he previously created together with Nacho Pérez-Pardo. Later, she Victoria opened her own account and adopted her real name to manage it. In 2021 he received the Ondas Award thanks to a podcast called Stretching the gum, which he performed in the company of Carolina Iglesias.