It's My Wife, It's My Life
Review of the Charco Press paperback edition (June 25, 2024) translated by [a:Robin Myers|41152|Robin Myers|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] from the Spanish language original [b:Una cita con la Lady|53170276|Una cita con la Lady|Mateo García Elizondo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1570307521l/53170276._SX50_SY75_.jpg|73642261] [A Date with the Lady] (November 6, 2019).

I ask the girl why if they're dead, I can see them but they can't see me.
'The dead see only what they damn well please,' she says.
Which is something the living do as well. - excerpt from "Last Date in El Zapotal."

Last Date in El Zapotal may seem like a book about death, but it's really a book about living. And about (here I am, editorialising flagrantly now) how difficult it is to stop. - excerpt from the Translator's Note by Robin Myers.

The Translator's Note (printed at the back of the book) was actually the first thing that I read from this recent Charco Press book and it probably had a great influence on the way I approached the novel itself. I think most people would otherwise find a book about a heroin addict who has retreated to an obscure village in order to die through the use of his final fix to be not only depressing but rather distasteful.

I could appreciate more the hallucinations and the encounters between the living and the dead in this novel, as the rather hapless addict wanders through the village and its outskirts. He even takes on final requests from some of the dead that he encounters. He hovers between both worlds and at some point he makes a crossover which isn't obvious to the reader at first. You could say I read it more as a metaphor for the experience of living. Heroin may be the crutch for the narrator's existence, but each of us have our own crutches, i.e. our reasons for living, don't we? And is it just me or do we not encounter the dead in our own dreams at times?


The painting "This was All Folly" by Tomas Harker, was used as the cover illustration for the original Spanish language edition "Una cita con la Lady" (2019) published by Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona. Image sourced from JacksonsArt.com.

I realize that most would not enjoy the surface subject matter here, but for me it became a 5-star, because I just couldn't stop reading it and couldn't help but be fascinated by it.

Soundtrack
The choice was obvious on this one, and it also provided for my lede header. It is Heroin by Lou Reed as recorded on The Velvet Underground debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967). You can hear the track on YouTube here or on Spotify here.

Trivia and Links
The English language synopsis for Last Date in El Zapotal describes it as "an homage to [b:Pedro Páramo|38787|Pedro Páramo|Juan Rulfo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1500663791l/38787._SY75_.jpg|1786290]" (1955), which was a novel by Mexican author [a:Juan Rulfo|21778|Juan Rulfo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1226313372p2/21778.jpg] (1917- 1986). You can read more about that novel and its influence at a Wikipedia article here (Note: Plot spoilers).