The novel The yellow brick road is the last contribution to the Spanish horror literature of the writer of And despite everything, John of God Garduno. A story, which apart from being a look at our past, shows us the darkest and most evil side of the human being.
Synopsis
Things are not easy after the Civil War. One cold December night, little Torcuato is forced to abandon everything he loves when, due to an unfortunate incident, he enters a Valladolid asylum. The only link you will keep with your past will be an old borrowed book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
In the sinister corridors of the psychiatric hospital, Torcuato will have to face his own fears as he tries to coexist with the extravagant tenants who now share his life. But what no one knows is that deep in the center, evil has taken shape and awaits a new victim.
El Camino de Baldosas Amarillas is an emotional novel by the writer Juan de Dios Garduño, set in the Spanish postwar period that talks about human cruelty and selfishness, but also about friendship, love, sacrifice and the instinct for survival. A portrait of human nature in its entirety wrapped in a lurid tale of authentic horror with Victorian echoes.
Opinion
The first thing that can strike one of the book is its title, which is inspired by the classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Lyman Frank Baum. Well, the center in which they put Torcuato, the protagonist of the work, is not a yellow brick road, far from it. Rather, it is a stairway to hell, to the paradise of human evils.
One has not been able to avoid making a regression to many of his childhood nightmares, because although it seems that the main character is naive, we cannot forget that he is a child. And even so, it is seen how a character develops who has to resort to courage to bring out the best in himself, the opposite of everything bad that lives in the mental center.
The asylum is a place devoid of humanity, not only because of those responsible for it, but also because of the general state of decline in the country. A center in which patients are tortured and abused, beings treated as pieces of a market of perversion. Herein lies the dirtiest part of the story, which becomes more and more apprehensive with each step, with each action of the characters. If there is something that the author does well, which we have already read in And despite everything, is to write with bad blood, with that need to torture and bring out the most masochistic side of the reader, the one that horror consumers like so much. After all, one of the purposes of reading and watching horror is to suffer unnecessarily.
I have liked it a lot for the simple fact that I have always been a consumer of psychological terror. And I think that in that sense the author knows how to play with these emotions that the characters who live these kinds of stories have. The author gives you one of lime and another of sand, playing with your feelings and deceiving you, even to the point of making you feel Torcuato.
Biography
Born in Seville in the hot summer of 1980. Since he published his novel El Caído he has not stopped. He has been a finalist and winner of competitions such as Book Andromeda: Cosmic Terror, Monsters of Reason I and III, Pumpkins in the Storage Room or in Land of Legends VIII.
He has also published stories in a multitude of anthologies, in the Scifiworld Special: King Kong Solidario, in the missing Miasma or in Tierras de Acero, two of his short stories have also been translated into French and published in Borderline magazine.
He has written prologues, has been a selector of anthologies (Taberna Espectral or Antología Z 2, Antología Z 3, Ilusionaria I, Ilusionaria II) jury in the International Prize of Electronic Publishing, and in the contest Antología z 3 and has made his first steps the cinematographic world as a scriptwriter (Elmala3ien. Scifiworld award finalist 2011), the first medium-length psychological horror film from the Valencian Community. “Llagas”, premiered at the Sitges fantastic film festival, together with Paco Plaza (REC1, REC2, REC3) and Miguel Ángel Font, and now he is preparing his third short film as a scriptwriter entitled Muñeca Rota.
In July 2010, he published his novel “Y pese a todo…” immediately becoming a best-seller with great acceptance by the public and critics. Vaca Films, the production company of Cell 211, is preparing the novel's film for the upcoming dates with an American co-production, directed by Miguel Ángel Vivas (Kidnapped, 2011) and Hollywood actors.
The first week of April 2011 he released the anthology of horror stories "Apuntes Macabros", published by the 23 Escalones publishing house, with a prologue by the famous film director Miguel Ángel Vivas and recommended by José Carlos Somoza, Rafael Marín or Juan Miguel Aerie.
In November 2011, he received the Nocte de terror award for the best national horror novel for "And despite everything ...".