This latest novel by Costa Rican novelist Fabian Dobles (born 1918) recounts the story of an elderly man whose return to the village where he grew up evokes difficult, sometimes farcical, but ultimately valuable memories of his boyhood. First published in Spanish in 1989. Distributed in the US by Du
An elderly man revisits his childhood home, thereby initiating a nostalgic journey in which his boyhood and his earliest sexual experiences are vividly evoked by the scents, sights, and sounds of the place. His memories intensify when he sleeps and dreams of the family home, full of talk, music, and colorful relatives. His return trip home inspires him to write a "confessional" letter to his mother, the letter he did not write during her lifetime. He writes sadly, and sometimes humorously, of the solitary and shameful life he led when his father, the village doctor, placed him in a seminary to study for the priesthood. In the coda to the novel, forgiveness begins as the elderly son realizes his father, though severe, taught him more about personal and professional integrity than anyone else.
