In "Eating Ashes" she tells the heart-rending story of the suicide of the anonymous narrator's brother. She is on her way back from Spain, with the ashes of her brother in her hands. She describes letting Diego’s ashes fall through her fingers, then tasting them: “I ate my brother”.
She tries to reconstruct the events leading up to his death, trying to understand, trying to explain, trying to channel grief and guilt. Both siblings were very close, left to grow up with their grandparents in Mexico, while their mother left them to live in Spain.
"Alright, let’s have a chat. Sit. You have to be strong, because you’re all grown up now, right? Yes, yes you are. I’m going to leave and you two are going to stay, but it won’t be forever. Nothing is forever, I’ve told you that before: it’s just for a little while, then you’ll come live with me and everything will be better. No, don’t make that face, that’s exactly the face I don’t want to see you make. Do you have to cry over everything? I need to leave because, well, what am I doing here in Mexico? Yes, I know I said that the last time, but last time was different. It was different because it was different. You were different, I was different"
Nine years later, both youngsters fly to Madrid to meet their mother. Life is hard, and they try to make a living with jobs available for people with an immigration background, even if they speak Spanish like everybody else. However close both siblings are, as an adolescent Diego develops his own personality, with his own likes and dislikes, often becoming impossible to deal with, despite the fact that they need to rely on each other.
"If you ask me what he did, or what he did to me, well, he made me grow up all at once. It caught me off guard, one day he was a little boy who obeyed and respected me, and the next day he was an unbearable jerk. He was one of two extremes, and it was hard to deal with him. I will never forget the first time he ran away from home. The memory of it makes me feel like crying: he got mad about some random thing, he and Mom started screaming at each other, and I wanted to stop him from leaving but he shoved me so hard I almost fell over. Then I tried to take his keys away, but by then he was bigger and taller than me and I couldn't. He left me there talking to myself. I remember all it took was the sound of the door closing and my stomach did a somersault. Seeing Diego leave, seeing him lose all respect for us, made me feel like throwing up. As if he had done the worst thing in the world, as if his rebellion had violated something deep under the surface. That's what it really did feel like for me."(p. 145)
Every short paragraph consists of musings by the narrator, re-telling what happened, taking a different perspective, a different angle, a different situation yet with similar and inevitable courses of events.
Navarro is an excellent writer, passionate about her characters, with a deep level of emotions and stylistic mastership, with a well-balanced narrative that is captivating even you know it ends.
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