Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Spanish (Ecuador) by Victor Meadowcroft – Publsihed April 2025

One day a number of people walk out of their Ecuadorian town of Cocuan, a place that is not on maps, for no apparent reason, other than they see their town as being ‘a carnival of atrocities’. They walk for days through a bleak and dangerous landscape heading vaguely for a ‘crag’. There is considerable ambiguity, partly intentional I think, to enhance the feel of magic realism around the piece.

Back in the town the residents collectively decide to go after the wanderers. The story is told through eight of them, and each contains some gruesome detail; one man is so desperate to recover the money he has loaned to another man on the trek he renders the debtor unconscious and pulls out his gold teeth, another tells of an encounter with a mad priest who chops off his own ears.

This is an experimental novel that treads the fine line between magic realism and surreality, and doesn’t quite get it right. The flaws are camouflaged though by Freire’s alluring prose.

In effect, this is eight accounts of the same failed journey, whose purpose was never clear. The language that the author uses though, and her translator Victor Meadowcroft, offer terrifying and frequently bleak and desperate visions, experienced by the wanderers particularly at night.

My GoodReads score 3 / 5