Gabriel Urza

Inhumanity, the human trait

All That Followed: A Novel by Gabriel Urza (Henry Holt and Co., $25).

Gabriel Urza, an American writer of Basque descent, makes a strong debut with All That Followed, set in a Basque village with a history.

Muriga was the site of a massacre during the Spanish Civil War. Since then, it’s developed a serious strain of Basque separatism, and some radicalized young people murdered a politician. Then, following the 2004 al Qaeda attack in Madrid, feelings in Muriga are show more once again boiling over.

With a trio of narrators—Joni, an American teacher who, after 50 years in town is still an outsider; Mariana, widow of the murdered politician and recipient of a life-saving kidney from a radical murdered by police; and Iker, one of the youths who killed Mariana’s husband, now imprisoned—give us the story of a town besieged by trouble from without and within.

Urza’s gift here is to show that terrorism is, always, an inhumane act perpetrated by humans upon their fellows. There is no us and them; there is only us, armed to the teeth and ready to kill or die.

(Reviewed on LIt/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com) show less

“He had been asking me for the Basque translations of peculiar words like these since the first day we met. He spoke Euskera well, but his vocabulary had holes in it, lacking, for example, a whole range of words that dealt with pain or toil, as if his family home where he had learned his Basque was free entirely of grief, or tenderness, or aching.”

I think grief, and tenderness, and aching reach the core of this haunting and riveting story told through three different narrators. Quite show more brilliant and highly recommended. show less

Author Gabriel Urza's family has roots in Spain’s Basque region. His new novel "All That Followed" shows us the faces of civil wars - the Spanish Civil War of the 1930's, the Basque separatist movement, and the small wars that families and couples often find themselves fighting. Urza recounts a fictional tale based on real events that explores the kidnapping and killing of a young politician by even younger separatists in the late 1990s. Urza limns a town where everyone knows where bullet show more holes were left by Franco's murderous thugs decades before. Ghosts of the murdered seem to arrive in the slanted rain - txirimiri in Basque. In a Rashomon like retelling of the politician's murder, three disparate voices speak in alternating chapters: Joni, an aging American expat teacher. Mariana, the victim's young wife. And Iker, a student activist turned abductor. Joni and Mariana's pain and loss are balanced with Iker's hunger for meaning and action and ultimate indoctrination into violence. Much like the current appeal of ISIS for many young men and women in Europe, Iker finds acceptance into a group of likeminded if not lost compadres. Urza's novel does not give us easy answers but instead focuses on the human costs of political and personal devotion and unfaithfulness.

Urza writes with a deep poetic connection to the Basque landscape and the struggles of its people. Highly recommended. show less

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader as part of a quick takes post to catch up. The point of these posts is to be pithy, not thorough (as I typically strive for).
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Ohhhh, there’s so much to talk about with this one. There’s the discouraging, disheartening, troubling behind-the-scenes at the Public Defender’s Office material. All of which feels so true-to-life that I can only imagine that the reality is worse. What it says about our Criminal Justice System is even show more worse. The personal story about this one lawyer is pretty stark, too. You hope that things get better for him and his family, too.

Then there’s the murder, the court maneuverings, the way the lawyers’ lives are changed by this. It’s just so…bleak. Wonderfully done—it’s supposed to be bleak, it’s supposed to make you wonder about what we’re doing with criminals/the accused/those defending them right now. The author pulled off what he set out to here, but you’re going to want something light on-deck to read after this.

So why am I covering the book in a quick-take instead of a longer post where I can expand all that? Honestly, I just don’t care enough. That’s not a slight on the book, it’s just my energy levels and picking what I want to invest energy in. I’ll definitely pounce on anything else Urza puts out and recommend you do the same. show less