| Title | : | Zero Saints |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | ebook |
| Number of Pages | : | 196 |
| Publication | : | First published October 15, 2015 |
Zero Saints Reviews
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I just finished this whirlwind cocktail of a novel and I'm feeling lightheaded. The raw humanity, the surreal spell, the body and the soul that bind the elements of this story together left me reeling. The prose is both savage and tonally alluring. The nucleus explodes with both revenge and spiritual evolution. I let my Kindle translate the Spanish sections for me throughout 65% of the book. For the final 35%, I let the motion and the physicality of the words guide me. I didn't miss a beat. Highly recommended.
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It's impressive how much great material author Gabino Iglesias is able to fit into such a tiny book. This, his Spanglish-language 2nd novel, is filled with everything from heavy doses of Santería and Yoruba religions, Mara Salvatrucha bangers that just may have a hint of demon in them, a hitman who is also an aspiring reggaeton artist, examinations of immigrant life, and a man who never blinks.
Her smile had all the power of the sun but didn't blind me. Instead, I wanted to look at it forever, to stay there and just look at her glorious face until everything around us turned to dust except our bodies.
But this is a difficult one to review. I also find it difficult to summarize it without spoiling the experience for others. It's one of those books that feels like it truly deserves a second read to fully process. From page 1, Iglesias hit me hard, and then the book was over before I even grasped what I read. The book is engrossing though, and mixes a somber tone and moments of quiet contemplation with moments of savage, visceral violence. There's even a hint of the fantastic, what I'll call magical noirism! Not only is about a quarter of it told in untranslated Spanish, but there is also untranslated Russian and Yoruba. As I said, there's a lot going on in this one! Many might find it a difficult read, but it's definitely rewarding. Give it a look, I'll wager you've probably not read anything quite like it...The thing about life is that time gets between facts and memories and as memories turn into what they are, facts start sliding back, moving into a space full of images from películas and skeletons from bad dreams and imagined monstruos and stuff that someone told you.
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Once again, Gabino Iglesias simply stuns.
In this short crime/thriller/supernatural novel, we encounter many gods, saints, weapons, gangs, and something mysterious in a bucket.
Written in Gabino's style of Spanglish, my Kindle's translation feature sure does come in handy.
Full of darkness, mystery, faith, drugs, alcoholism, guns and a couple of wonderful dogs, this novel is sure to surprise and delight.
Highly recommended!
*I bought two copies of this book with my hard earned cash.* -
This was an incredible read, yet I have a difficult time wrapping my head around everything that was great about ZERO SAINTS because there was so much stuff both on the emotional, technical and intellectual level that clicked with me. First thing first, the protagonist Fernando was pretty awesome. He is a tough guy and a man of principles, yet he is alone in a way only a man of his ilk can be in a world on the edge of reality, filled with outlaws and murderers. I've had a hard time prying myself from this book because I've connected with the fear, the loneliness and the rich interior life of Fernando.
Also, It's been a while since I've read a crime novel that conveyed a sense of danger with so much immediacy. The characters are great, but they are constantly in such a state of danger, you actually feel great to be at home instead of being part of a novel. For a novel that has an understated fantasy aspect, it was a clever way to ground it in reality. I also loved the religious aspect of ZERO SAINTS as it subtly seeped into its reality and kept the reader guessing. I often speak of great novels as emotional experience, but that was one. I felt the need to talk about it right away, but I need to take in some of its power now. A short, yet SO-LID novel. Do yourself a favor and get yourself a copy. -
Un interesante conjunto y bien hecho cuento de la pérdida y la venganza. ¡Gracias, Kindle Translator! No podría haberlo hecho sin ti. Seriamente.
Por cierto, ¿qué hay en ese cubo loco? ¡Comer dedos, hombre! ¡Dedos! Y Dios sabe qué más. Si Fernando falla en su bendita misión de violencia, entonces tendrá que averiguarlo de la manera más dura.
Looking forward to reading more from Gabino Iglesias. -
Wow, this book packs a LOT of punch into its pages.
Billed as a 'barrio noir,' I think that term hits pretty close. There are lots of passages en Español in here. Now me personally, I took a couple of years of Spanish in high school, so I was able to figure out maybe 50% of the non-English parts. But you know what? You don't really need to understand Spanish to suss out what's being said. Context, context, context, amigos. You can tell where someone's saying someone else is a douche, or someone's praying to a saint, or someone's pining for some authentic grub.
I personally thought that this novella (novelito?) was extremely well-written, and it comes with a few twists and genre-flavorings that I did not at all expect. -
Iglesias really does something special within these pages. Listed as a barrio noir, and mentioned as such by the author himself, this is a crime novel like no other I’ve experienced. A taste of horror, a bit of dark magic, and sections of gorgeous prose commenting on society, life, and humanity, are just a few of the things that made this read special for me. The mixture of Spanish and English throughout might be daunting for some, but the authenticity of the cultures and peoples depicted in this novel demand it.
I’ve heard he may have another novel on the way, and I’M HERE FOR IT. -
In Gabino Iglesias’s barrio noir Zero Saints, ex-pat Mexican drug dealer Fernando finds himself targeted by a gang of rival bangers from hell – maybe literally from hell. This book is getting a lot of hype, and deservedly so. It’s a kick in the teeth of a crime novella, interwoven with religion and the supernatural like a Tex-Mex John Connelly. Moments of beauty are punctuated by scenes of quite shocking violence – for someone who considers himself pretty desensitized, that’s saying something. And hey, I even picked up a little Spanish. One question, G. What’s in that fucking bucket?
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3.5* too many passages, sentences, half sentences in Mexican.
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This is a fantastic read and definitely Gabino Iglesias at his best. It's the second book I've read by him this year and they're about as different as two books can possibly be.
Zero Saints is intense, grimy, almost holy, and full of violence and pain. The violence is institutional, systemic, but also present and active and very real in an immediate sense. There are brutal men here. Men who may be demons. Demons who may be men.
Iglesias tells a personal story about drugs, immigration, cultural heritage, religion, and violence with touches of postcolonialism and humor, which are really difficult things to tie together. These characters are felt deeply and they're real to me. Real in tangible and concrete ways because I know people like this.
But, yeah, fantastic stuff. It begins with so much intensity that you can't imagine anything else living up to it, but this novel never really stops, it only takes a few breaths. It's a quick, intense, and fast paced read with plenty going on beneath the surface.
Iglesias is something else. You gotta watch out for whatever he does next. -
TW: homophobic terms in Spanish
What an insane blood soaked ride with an ending to match! Even though the MC Fernando flees Mexico after pissing of the wrong people, he can’t help himself falling back into a line of work, dealing drugs, that has been lucrative for him, but he could be doing this at his own peril. There are no saints, but the demons he prays for protection from are very real in human form. Zero Saints is both brutal and bleak, with a tentative relief at the end. I couldn’t put down the end couple dozen pages of this book because how everything turned out was so crazy! -
Updated as now on STORGY.com
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Zero Saints, in my humble opinion, is just that little bit better than Coyote Songs. I bloody loved Coyote Songs, but this one is just off the chain, crazy good!
Please don’t hit me in the face (I know Coyote Songs holds a special place in peoples hearts), or chop my fingers off and drop them into the bucket, I mean no disrespect it’s just my opinion.
And whilst we are on that subject… what the hell is in the BUCKET Gabino?
Tell me, I wan’t to know? Or do I? Or will it be like playing out the climactic scene in Se7en where Brad Pitt is screaming about wanting to know what’s in the box? We all know how well that turned out. So on second thoughts Gabino – you keep that dirty little secret and your bloody bucket!
Anyway I’ve gone totally off point, so let’s bring this back to the review.
Zero Saints is a brutal ride into the dark and gritty underbelly of Austin – a shit-kicking, whiskey drinking, nacho eating, no nonsense kind a place. A place that’s riddled with the lowest of the low, where immigrants find a way of life, where the wealthy keep the poor under the heel of their boot and a place where drug dealers thrive and addicts run rampant. It’s where hit men and enforcers mingle in dive bars and strip joints.
And now, this hellhole that is Austin is where a heavily-tattooed group of gangsters are hoping to make a name for themselves and have taken up residence, moving in like a cancer to chew this place up and shit out what’s left over.
‘The American dream is as false as the meat in your one-dollar burger and the canned laughter you hear on television.’
These gangsters are determined on taking over the local drug racket and will carve this landscape up and keep the lions share for themselves. They’ll take it by force if they have too, and these brutal gangbangers have something else on their side, which, might be a bit more than human.
Strap yourselves in for the ride of your life. Things are going to get bumpy and bloody, you’ll be thrown about at will and tossed through the windshield like a crash-test-dummy. This is a race for survival, where all bets are off and the winner takes all.
Zero Saints starts like an olympic sprinter out of the blocks, it’s fast, brutal and shows no signs of slowing down. Our protagonist Fernando is kidnapped by a bunch of gangbangers and taken to a dingy part of town in the boot of a car, it’s one hell of an introduction to our protagonist, the voice of Fernando is brilliant and pulls the reader right in. He’s pulled out of the car and taken into what appears to be an abandoned house, where he has to witness a friend being tortured and then beheaded. It’s brutal, grotesque and sets the tone for all the crazy that’s about to be unleashed on the reader.
Did I mention that there’s also a bucket. I can hear you saying, ‘Ross, give it a rest about this bucket‘ but I can’t. These gangbangers tear and saw and pull pieces off the man they’re torturing, and one-by-one they deposit these offerings into a bucket. As the morsels of flesh fall in, there’s the splat but it’s then followed by an audible crunch. It’s only a subtle thing, something that has no relevance on any of the narrative that follows, but like an itch you can’t scratch it stayed with me through the whole damn book. It’ll stay with you too, mark my words. I still hear it in my nightmares…
Gabino’s prose is on fire in this book, it’s unflinching as you would expect (it’s one of the reasons I love his work), it’s also beautifully poetic and masterfully woven together, there’s gorgeous work on similes and metaphors that at times had me salivating with its brilliance. There’s one piece of writing in particular that really blew me away, it’s just absolutely stunning (page 117) it’s just masterful.
‘Sometimes the best thing that happens to other people is an unloaded gun.’
Gabino Iglesias is the Mexican Bukowski – it’s a bold statement but one that I stand fully behind. Gabino’s work on broken characters is reminiscent of the master himself, it is as if Bukowski were guiding Iglesias’ pen whilst writing the scintillating Zero Saints. The prose and narrative in Zero Saints can also be compared to the bleakness, grittiness and utter thrill ride that was Cormac McCarthy’s ‘No Country For Old Men’.
Gabino Iglesias is elbowing his way into that bracket of writers that I just can’t get enough of, he’s rubbing shoulders with greatness… so he best pull up a chair and make himself comfortable, because on this form (and Coyote Songs) I think he’ll be sticking around for a while.
Zero Saints is a freight train derailment of a book and one that truly leaves its mark on the reader, hardboiled crime with a huge slice of horror. Brilliantly brutal and utterly engrossing. -
A ferocious book, and I learned some new words, too! Gabino Iglesias' new novel is full of Spanish thought bubbles and slang and asides that are expertly rationed and don't confuse at all. Kind of like what Burgess did in A Clockwork Orange, maybe more like what Cypress Hill did on their Greatest Hits, but twice as murderous as either. Context more than gets you through the language Chimera, and the author's strategy pays off big time, highlighting the dangerous, otherworldly beauty of the borderlands, especially Iglesias' blood-red Mexico, "un monstruo," which eats the unwary like popcorn, sometimes fingers first. Violent as hell. Sad, too. I devoured it fast, before it ate me instead.
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Zero Saints is as gritty and uncompromising a novel you will find while still being glad you read it. Gabino Iglesias places his story in Austin, Texas. It is not the urban chic Austin of SXSW or Austin City Limits but the Austin of gangs, drug dealers and a displaced people. Fernando has crossed from Mexico into the Austin streets but have not escaped the terror of the gangs. While his life is still hard, being a drug-dealer in Austin is still better than the horrors that affected his family south of the border. But he is about to realize that may no longer be true. At the beginning of Zero Saints, he has been abducted by a group of drug dealers who want him to take a message to his boss that they were taking over some of the territory. That message includes Fernando watching his friend being tortured and having his head sawed off. This new gang is of a level that is past anything Fernando has experienced. . They seem to have special powers emanating from a source of dark magic. Even Fernando's paid enforcers are afraid to take them on. But Fernando has a need for revenge and honor even when everything tells him it is hopeless.
There are many things that make this novel stand out from the load of similar crime and gang novels. First is the main character. Fernando may not be what most readers consider a role model but he is honorable in his own way. He has values and faith. That is something the reader can identify with. The second thing is the language in the book. Almost half is in Spanish yet it does not slow it down. It flows effortlessly through the pages blending into the plot and action. I could read some of it even though I do not understand Spanish very well, it is the language of the streets that I am familiar with. Let's just say the Spanish I heard as a child was not taught in the schools. Yet except for occasional large portions of prayer, it is not only easy to get the gist but it places you there in the midst of the action and angst. And that leads to the third reason this book is so vibrant. The flow. It doesn't stop whether it is violent action or a tense conversation or the moving emotions of the past and present going through the mind of the protagonist. Iglesias have developed in under 200 pages a very real glimpse of life in these parts of the United States. The supernatural aspects are only a tease to the real messages in this book.
If I read Zero Saints last year when it came out, there would be no doubt it would have been on my top ten list. But I didn't. That is no reason to miss it. As long as we have urban life, as long as cultures collide, and as long as we tolerate an underclass of immigrants, this book will have relevance. I give my top recommendation to Zero Saints -
Zero Saints is no nonsense noir that is impressive on many levels. The writing is technically superb, yet retains a lyricism without ever trying too hard. Fernando's story is gritty and uncompromising. The struggles, the emotions, the setting, the supernatural and religious elements, they are all conveyed so well. Gabino Iglesias is for real. This book hits hard and doesn't let up, earning it’s place among my all time favorite reads.
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What an original, violent, oddly beautiful, bat-shit-crazy mix of crime and horror. I loved it.
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So. Gabino Iglesias. I had never read any of his work before. To be honest, I didn't really know that he was a fiction author. We were facebook friends and I had read a ton of book cubrirreviews by him. In fact, I greatly admire him as a book reviewer and follow his reviews avidly. But I had never encountered his fiction. Then I started seeing this book pop up over and over again. All over Facebook and Twitter people were raving about it, and it got so hot the feds had to step in to keep it from burning down the internet. You all remember that, right? Well, I might be exaggerating just a tad, but that's the way it should have gone. The book is ZERO SAINTS and if things happened the way they should in life the internet would be a smoking ruin right now.
Being 100% serious, there really were a lot of people that I trust and respect talking up this book around my various social media feeds and, among those of us heavy into dark noir, it was an exceptionally hot topic. Hot enough that I had to get my hands on a copy as soon as I possibly could. And I'm so, so glad I did. ZERO SAINTS is like nothing I've read in this sub-genre before. Iglesias himself describes it as barrio noir and that's actually pretty apt. It's the story of a superstitious drug dealer and cartel enforcer, Fernando, an unwilling immigrant to southern Texas who finds himself at odds with a rival gang led by a ruthless and terrifying man who might have been spawned in the depths of hell.
In ZERO SAINTS Gabino Iglesias does something that I've seen done before, but rarely with any great success. In fact, the only name that comes to mind, other than Iglesias, is Cormac McCarthy. What I'm talking about is the use of Macaronic language, the integration of one language into the context of another. In McCarthy's case, his usage is strictly a Spanish/English crossover or what people refer to as Spanglish. With Iglesias' book, it's mostly Spanish but he also does it successfully with Russian in a few places. For those of you who are sitting there trying to figure out what the fuck I'm talking about, here's a sample, in which Iglesias unwittingly describes the essence of the book:
"Todo deja de ser roca para convertirse en agua. Everything flows. Everything acquires the consistency of shadows seen in dreams."
This is done frequently throughout the narrative, but never clumsily, and it's really quite beautiful, even poetic, in it's execution.
ZERO SAINTS is straightforward, hardcore noir fiction, sometimes brutally violent, fast paced, and brooding. It's also brutally honest at times and looks issues like poverty and immigration right in the face boldly and fearlessly:
"What happens when you cross la frontera is that you want to clean up, find a good job somewhere, meet a beautiful, sweet girl. You want the American Dream. But fuck all that. The American Dream is as false as the meat in your one-dollar burger and the canned laughter you hear on television. And it’s even worse for you. You have no skills and no diploma and no friends and no nada. You’re a problem. Un ilegal más. A beaner. A television joke. A wetback. You’re nothing but an issue brainless white politicians discuss from the safety of their offices."
Having read tons of hardcore dark crime and noir of every type, I can honestly say that ZERO SAINTS is completely unique, both in content and execution. It's crime and violence with a bite, but it's also literary, with an underlying philosophy that is lacking in a lot of noir fiction. It's also rife with underpinnings of horror and the supernatural, with elements that will scare the hell out of you. That's no exaggeration. Parts of this book literally gave me chills and it's no easy feat to scare me.
I haven't had so much raw, unadulterated fun with a book in a long time and I can't wait to see what comes out of Iglesias' masterful pen next. And I hope to god he revisits Fernando and delivers more of this delightful, unique "barrio noir" that he's so adept at. As he should be since he pretty much created it. Gabino Iglesias is a rockstar wordsmith and ZERO SAINTS is not the work of a one trick pony. I have a feeling Iglesias will be a name that fans of dark fiction will utter again and again in the coming months and years. I certainly hope it is, and you will too after you read ZERO SAINTS. Go get it. Read it before you die. -
Zero Saints by Gabino Iglesias was published by Broken River Books late in 2015. A quick, propulsive tale packed with violence and threat, in which a gang-connected drug dealer on the dark side of Austin, Texas receives a warning from a group of rivals, who might also be demons. Fernando tries to find the right path through a dangerous milieu that stretches across the border into Mexico, venturing there and back again.
I don’t know who came up with the phrase “Barrio noir,” but it fits. Some readers have complained about the amount of Spanish or “Spanglish” mixed into the text, but I found this helped create a sense of atmosphere, of partial foreignness or at least separateness from the dominant American culture more familiar to many of us. It allowed me to believe I was seeing through Fernando’s eyes, and let me feel privy to his thoughts.
Visceral and tough, poetic and beautiful yet oh-so-dark. Zero Saints is a highly recommended thrill ride, artfully told, and sets Gabino Iglesias apart from the bulk of his neo-noir contemporaries. I can’t wait to see what this guy does next! -
La simplicidad de No hay santos alcanza todos los aspectos que uno quiera analizar, desde la caracterización de los personajes hasta el hilo narrativo o la construcción de diálogos. Si bien en otros casos esto podría ser un elemento desfavorable, Gabino Iglesias utiliza la concisión con maestría, mostrando en cada caso solo lo que quiere transmitir. No hay nada superfluo ni accesorio. Nando es un inmigrante mejicano que llega a Austin huyendo de un pasado oscuro y sobrevive trapicheando con drogas, para verse sumergido de repente en una trama relacionada con la mara salvatrucha. Su idolatría por la Santa Muerte y su empeño por sobrevivir articularán el resto de la narración. Crítica completa:
http://www.libros-prohibidos.com/gabi... -
Following ‘Fiebre Tropical’ this was my second ‘Frontera’ novel, or whatever they call writings covering people from South American roots living in the States that are written in a mix of English and Spanish. Again, despite never having officially studied Spanish, I had little difficulty getting what was going down. Unlike ‘Fiebre’, pretty much a romance story, this is a real gang coming of age piece set in Austin, Texas, which certainly has its gory moments. I appreciated the story it was telling, and there were parts I really liked, but it never really rose above just that. I will buy and try his ‘Coyote Songs’ should it jump out at me on the bookstore shelves, but only if that happens.
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Dark, sharp, and at times incredibly brutal. I fucking LOVED IT! Full review to come.
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Intense, visceral, and the language was really creative and stunning. I'll write more as I collect my thoughts on the book.
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This book would be voted most likely to have a film adaptation be filmed by Robert Rodríguez. It is gritty, violent, intense, dark, and teach you to say your prayers, those you know and those you don't know to gods and spirits you've only heard of in passing.
I think the main trigger warning here is triggers since there's a whole lot of guns, drugs, shooting, and killing going on. Oh and there's a bucket which might scare you more than a gun.
Also, this is a book that is best enjoyed if you're truly fluent in both English and Spanish. Although the narrative is in English, there's a LOT of Spanish and it switches back and forth very much like stream of thought. It's not to say you can't enjoy it if you don't translate or don't even know Spanish, but there's a very unique flow to Zero Saints, and like Nando, rewards you the better prepared you are. -
Zero Saints by Gabino Iglesias is as noir as any gritty classic by Jim Thompson, James M Cain or Ross MacDonald.
I’m not entirely sure this officially qualifies as horror, but there are plenty of scary scenes, Santeria rituals, and acts of violence to keep you flying through the quick chapters of this intense read.
Any book worth your time can sometimes take some effort. I don’t read Spanish, and there are a lot of passages that are written in Spanish without translation. This proved to be a challenge, but I’m OK with being reminded by the author that I should have paid closer attention to my own neighborhood in Queens when I was 14 and chose to learn Spanish instead of Italian.
And I will tell you that some of these untranslated paragraphs were indecipherable without a translation app, while at other times I surprised myself with how many Spanish words I’ve picked up just from life experience. Oh, did I mention there is some untranslated Russian thrown in for good measure?
While you may get slowed down by some of the Spanish (there’s also plenty mixed in with the English), don’t let this otherwise blazingly fast-paced “barrio noir” crime novel stop you from devouring it. Remember the first time you saw a Quentin Tarantino movie and were kind of awed by his audacity? That’s the best way for me to describe Gabino Iglesias and Zero Saints. -
Something about this book just pulled me in and loved every page. I heard so many great things about Gabino Iglesias on bookstagram and on Adam Cesare's youtube channel. As a Hispanic it was nice reading a horror novel by a Latinx author and from my home state. I love this book a lot, it had everything I wanted to read in a horror novel.
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When I was younger, I would use certain words until their meaning lost all impact. One of my favorite words was INTENSE. School was intense, my love life was intense, every movie was intense. It was a wonder I made it through my everyday life without being consumed by the intensity of it all.
Reading Gabino Iglesias’ crime fiction novel Zero Saints brought this word to my forefront of my mind. I probably told myself this book was intense about every twenty pages or so and I meant it everytime.
The main character Fernando tries to make a quiet life as an illegal alien in Austin, Texas, but can’t seem to escape the violence of la frontera aka the border between U.S. and Mexico. He sells drugs and works as an enforcer to make ends meet. But after he gets thrown in a trunk and forced to watch his friend’s head get cut off by some heavily tattooed gangsters, everything begins to fall apart.
There’s a good amount of Spanish in here, but Gabino does a great job of conveying the meaning through context. Don’t let a dash of another language scare you away. I promise you it’s worth it and adds to the rich flavor of the narrative.
The supernatural elements running through this book are on point. This is the first time I’ve seen santeria, orishas, voodun and other not so well-known religions find there way into a crime fiction book.
Zero Saints hits you like a freight train and doesn’t let up. It’s full of grit, desperation, and a dark intensity that might swallow you whole if you’re not careful. This is everything I wanted and more in a crime novel. I pray to Santa Muerte that Gabino pens another crime fiction book in a similar vein (the Russian hitman deserves a solo book). -
Thinking about this book makes my mouth water, and not just because of lines like this:
"Her leche con chocolate cheeks looked like she’d been caught in a freckle storm without an umbrella."
I could spend a paragraph unpacking everything that makes this sentence so wonderful, from the assonance to the seamless blending of English and Spanish to what has to be one of the freshest, most flavorful, most tonally pitch-perfect metaphors I've read in some time (there's so much tenderness and affection stuffed into this one thought that it's practically bursting at the seams), but I've got a point to make and I don't want to get sidetracked any more than I already have. So, here we go. ZERO SAINTS reads like something written on a caffeine drip. It's a coffee-fueled airliner of a novel soaring on a jetstream of magical realism and mythical violence, every bit as lovely as it is raw.
If you like revenge, read this book. If you like prose that crackles and spits on the page, read this book. If you like books, read this book. And if you feel daunted by the presence of a language other than English, don't fret. Iglesias offers more than enough contextual clues to guide you along, and in those few moments when understanding falls short, when meaning gets lost in the rush, the story has all the energy it needs to make up the difference. And then some. -
Fernando, a man working for a drug dealer in Austin, Texas, gets caught in a power struggle between his boss and a new group in town, headed by Indio, a heavily tattooed sadists who takes much pleasure in cutting people's heads off.
Gabino has found his niche. I've read and loved his first book, GUTMOUTH, but this is definitely a next level piece of art.
The devotion Fernando shows to Santa Muerte, the Mexian folk saint, is what frams this narrative, and shows a more human side of a man working dealing drugs.
Gabino balances the violence and the devotion aspecsts really well, and the book hooks up until the end.
This book packs a strong punch. I highly recommend it as a landmark in Gabino's career, and as a promise of more awesome work to come. -
Gritty and visceral novella that maybe places a marker down on what noir in the 2010s is all about with this line:
"Our lives aren't as great as we want to believe they are, and being afraid is a magnifying glass that makes you see every painful detail, every crack."
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In the otherworld that all stories spring from, crime fiction inhabits a unique space. Crime fiction, insofar as what it claims for itself, is an especially proletariat fiction. Crime fiction writer Danny Gardner is fond of saying that “crime affects us all” and that is true but it is more true for some than others. The lower your station in life, the likelier you are to come to intimately understand the truth of Gardner’s maxim. When you’re poor, when you’re a person of color, when you’re “Other” (and increasingly, we are all “Other”), “crime affects us all.” We see it, we hear about it, we know it. We may experience these things in different ways but it permeates every level of society.
There are two wellsprings of crime fiction that all in the genre flows from -- the Mystery and the Noir. There can be darkness in the Mystery and there can be a mystery in Noir but in their purest form the two are diametrically opposed. The Mystery is usually solved or at least viewed as solvable. The pure Mystery story is set in a world where, if the protagonist simply tries hard enough, the conflict at heart can be tackled and Order restored to the universe. In the pure Noir, the darkness cannot be penetrated and the universe is in a constant state of Chaos and flux. The protagonist is not concerned with restoring Order because Order is an illusion. The best that can be hoped for is keeping the darkness at bay for as long as possible. Of course, in the pure Noir, there can be only failure, only the darkness taking you. Almost all of crime fiction, whatever its designation as a consumable product, exists in the shadowy realm between Mystery and Noir, drawing from both springs. Still, crime fiction, if it fulfills its promises, is the writer’s unique position between these two worldviews. It is a fiction of the world as it is. Even if the crime fiction takes place in the past or future, if it is true crime fiction (and not another genre in crime fiction clothing), it deals with the contemporary world of the author as it is. Not what it has been. Not what it can be. What it is.
Crime fiction is practical fiction. It is a fiction for the downtrodden, for the oppressed, for the poor, for the working class, for the imprisoned, and for those downtrodden, oppressed, poor, tired, overworked, imprisoned aspects of us all. In this respect, crime fiction is the most egalitarian of all fictions and if there is a fiction that truly holds a transformative power, the ability to inspire radical thought in its readership, this is it. The influential figures in Mystery and Noir come from backgrounds -- detectives, attorneys, law enforcement, journalism, etc. -- which afford them a unique position from which to offer commentary on the “underworld” of life, the crimes that affect us all. Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op is a reflection of Hammett’s own time as an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Chandler’s fiction is fueled by his time as a reporter. The men and women whose work forms the bedrock of the genre were voices of their times.
The problem, then, with crime fiction arises when authors become too attached to the crime fiction of the past. Nostalgia is a powerful drug but it blunts the effects of the fiction and leaves in its wake something that is, at best, ineffectual and, at worst, emotionally dishonest. This is, in some respects, a societal issue and it stems from our collective inability to confront the reality of the world as it is rather than as it has been or how we would like for it to be.
The prevailing philosophical debate of the cultural revolutions in the 1960’s can be summed up as such: “What is right?” The various conundrums that stem from this question -- is anything right? how do we determine the difference between right and wrong? is right and wrong relative? -- led to events like the Civil Rights Movement. These are major shifts and should not be ignored if we are to write honest, true crime fiction. The fact is that many writers in the intervening decades have neglected to do this and created a kind of fetishism for the old guard, inadvertently creating an entire subgenre within crime fiction that ignores the world as it is in favor of a glorified fan fiction in which the author, like a junkie, chases that high that they felt when they first read their favorite crime writers, thereby absolving themselves of the responsibilities inherent in the genre: to present the world as it is and to wrestle with the philosophical and moral conundrums of the here and now.
If we flash forward to the present, the debate has shifted focus and can be summarized as: “what is true?” Is there truth? What is the difference between the truth and a lie? What lies have we been told by those in positions of authority? These are the questions of Ferguson, Missouri. These are the questions of the Occupy movement. These are the questions inherent in understanding gender. As before, there might be no answers, there might be multiple answers at once, but the importance is in asking the questions and struggling with what they mean. Also as before, one finds the majority of crime fiction writers not only refusing to answer the questions, but refusing to acknowledge that the questions are even there. Crime fiction, for the most part, remains locked in a pre-1960’s world. Darkness lurks around the corner but it looks a little softer around the edges and less dangerous now. Females are, by and large, still fatale and the author won’t use racial epithets anymore but he’ll damn sure write a character who does because, the writer claims, we mustn’t shy away from the harsher parts of life. “This is the world we live in”, the writer says with a grimace as he gently strokes his copy of Jim Thompson’s Pop. 1280. The writer cracks his knuckles, fingers poised on the keyboard, and draws on all of the jaded professional criminals, sexually promiscuous dames, and wisecracking detectives (or characters turned amateur sleuth) that he can yank out of the Land of the Neverwas all the while claiming to “pull no punches” and each time the literary landscape is that much sicker for it.
Enter Gabino Iglesias. Enter Barrio Noir.
Gabino Iglesias, in his debut crime novel Zero Saints, is the antithesis of the hypothetical crime writer just mentioned. Iglesias establishes an Anti-Chandleresque hermeneutic that, at times, borders on a satire of the type of bland fiction coming out of the genre. His protagonist, Fernando, is one that is not represented elsewhere in most of the genre because Fernando lives in the 21st century, a mythical place those other books have never been. Iglesias’s prose is alive and burning with an urgent flame. After getting kidnapped at the beginning of the novel, Fernando muses:
“Then I remembered I was in Austin, not Mexico. Folks don’t get their heads blown off in the streets of Austin. Bodies aren’t hung from bridges or stuffed into suitcases and left on the side of the road. Although most politicians deserve it, los narcos don’t kidnap them while leaving the office and put two full mags in their brains...Plus, los cabrones that jumped me were brown. If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead. No hitting or kidnapping bullshit. That’s what los blancos do.”
This is a novel for the world as it is. Iglesias truly pulls no punches in his delivery. Much has been made of the Spanglish in the novel but nothing much has been made of the lack of diversity in crime fiction and, if crime fiction is truly to be a fiction for the common man, there is something very wrong with how middle class and white the genre is. Fiction does not exist in a vacuum and it has positions even if a writer thinks they are choosing to not have positions. A lack of spirituality in a novel does not mean that the book has nothing to say about spirituality and a writer not being aware of his or her positionality does not mean that their position is not exposed by what they choose to include and what they choose to leave out. The world of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler or George V. Higgins was their own and Iglesias has his and ne’er the two shall meet:
“What happens when you cross la frontera is that you want to clean up, find a good job somewhere, meet a beautiful, sweet girl. You want the American Dream, But fuck all that. The American Dream is as false as the meet in your one-dollar burger and the canned laughter you hear on television. And it’s even worse for you. You have no skills and no diploma and no friends and no nada. You’re a problem. Un ilegal mas. A beaner. A television joke. A wetback. You’re nothing but an issue brainless white politicians discuss from the safety of their offices.”
Zero Saints is the delivery of publisher Broken River Books’ promise of “fiction for the rest of us.” It is a book with its feet in the dirt, planted in the world as it is. Iglesias does not present a world in which everyone has equal footing. He creates a world that is as twisted, as ugly, and interesting as the one we actually live in. Zero Saints gets its claws in you, squeezing your heart, piercing your very soul. It knocks the wind out of you. As a reading experience, it is one of the most fulfilling times you are likely to have in the genre for some time. It is reading that does not feel like reading. Iglesias draws from a deep well.
Zero Saints is a declaration. It drags crime fiction, while the genre clutches its idols of Hammett, Thompson and Chandler, into the 21st century, into the here and now. Every crime fiction author alive, if they be worth a damn, needs to read this book and consider where they stand in relation to it. It is a dare: “Try to shovel that fake plastic shit and call it real now.”
Crime affects us all. Gabino Iglesias knows this and he knows that we know it. Like any good and responsible crime fiction author, he won’t let us forget that we know it. In a world that is becoming a simulacrum of reality more and more every minute, Iglesias holds up a mirror to the real and the actual. He spins a web so complex and terrifying and beautiful, a web unlike the world we live in, and yet it is unlike the world. The world and its refusal to tackle the real questions are why Iglesias can write what he does. One gets the impression that so long as there is corruption and oppression and brutality, Gabino Iglesias will stand opposed to the 24-hour media machine propping up the pale simulation that we have come to call life with his mirror held up to the real and actual, exposing the quiet desperation and slow death beneath the plastic veneer.
Thank God.
