The Sky Over Lima

March 14, 2016
In his first novel, Bárcena draws on a real-life literary hoax to craft an intriguing tale of transatlantic catfishing. Carlos, the introverted son of a vulgar rubber baron, and José, the swaggering scion of one of Peru’s most illustrious families, are two rich friends who fancy themselves poets, “playing at being poor in a Lima garret.” On a lark, and in hopes of securing a copy of his latest book, they strike up a correspondence with the Spanish poet and the real-life future Nobel Laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez, by posing as an earnest, besotted young woman, Georgina. Jiménez takes the bait, and so twice a month a ship carries letters between the imaginary muse and the pining poet, missives that miraculously escape the clutches of the boat’s letter-gnawing rat. As Georgina becomes the protagonist of a serial epistolary novel within Barcena’s novel, the young men struggle to flesh her out: whom to model her after, what to reveal and what to conceal, and what genre her story will ultimately belong to. The self-referential novel drives home, a little too insistently, the fictional nature of life and romance: “everything is literature... the entire world is a text constructed of words alone.” However, Bárcena grounds the literary games in a richly detailed, early 20th-century Lima and its cast of secondary characters: dock workers, prostitutes, café-haunting literati. Its lightly ironic tone darkening as it proceeds, the novel sensitively explores how a literary prank shapes the sentimental, romantic, and moral education of Carlos, the more genuine of the two fraudsters.

March 15, 2016
Spain's Barcena has based his first novel on a true if bizarre literary hoax concocted in 1904: a romantic correspondence between rising young Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez (eventual recipient of the 1956 Nobel Prize) and two Peruvian men pretending to be a young female fan. Law students Carlos Rodriquez and Jose Galvez decide to write Jimenez, the author of Violet Souls, to ask him to send them a copy of his latest book, which they cannot find in Lima's bookstores. Both young men are wealthy aspiring poets. But Carlos, raised in a family of new money and no lineage, is self-conscious and self-effacing around casually self-important Jose, whose family can boast both money and a prestigious ancestry. As a kind of joke, which they share with their friends, the men decide to pretend to be a well-born young poetry lover named Georgina Hubner. Carlos, who has been teased for his feminine handwriting, does the actual writing of Georgina's letters. Eventually Carlos comes up with the idea of turning the correspondence into a novel, and soon the novel takes over his life. The more he feels driven to write, the less ambition he has to be a great writer. Jose writes less, but his ambition for literary success grows. Thanks to advice from a professional love-letter writer, Georgina's letters become more personal. After she shares a "tragedy" similar to one Jimenez has experienced, the poet is clearly smitten. In a different way, so is Carlos, who has modeled Georgina after his only experience approaching love, with a child prostitute he encountered when he was only 13. The correspondence stalls when Lima's dockworkers go on strike, stopping trans-Atlantic mail delivery. The strike also causes a rift between Carlos, who has a new sociopolitical awareness, and Jose, who doesn't. Nevertheless, the novel/correspondence continues until it reaches an unexpected crisis point. Charming if a bit precious, Barcena's novel is both a love letter to the creative process and a contemplation on the sometimes-blurred line between life and art.

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Starred review from January 1, 2016

Sons of two of Lima's wealthiest families, Jose Galvez and Carlos Rodriguez resist their parents' desires for them to go into law, instead pursuing poetry. The only problem is that they are quite poor poets. Desperate for inspiration, they write to celebrated Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez to obtain a copy of his latest book, which is unavailable in Lima. But as they are sure that the maestro will never bother with two young men, they pretend to be the beautiful, beguiling, and entirely fictional Georgina Hubner. To their surprise and joy, Juan Ramon replies with a letter and the book. And so begins an epistolary relationship that spirals deeper into a miasma of lies and truths, love and inspiration. Based on a remarkable real-life story, this sweepingly beautiful translation will enchant readers. Gomez Barcena's style is both fresh and classic, delightful and mysterious, and his characters--who feel like living, breathing creatures--are sure to captivate even as they break your heart. VERDICT Readers will be unable to put down this gem. A perfect fit for fans of Enrique Vila-Matas's Bartleby & Co.--Kristen Droesch, Library Journal

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2016
The scheme is simple enough: two young poets, enamored with the Spanish Nobel laureate Juan Ramon Jimenez, invent a persona, Georgina, to solicit a copy of the maestro's latest book. The ensuing correspondence moves from literature, to intimacies, until settling into platitudes, frustrating the perpetrators of the hoax, Jose Galvez and Carlos Rodriguez, artistically inclined members of the Peruvian 1 percent. The lads must learn the ways of the veiled lady, methods of seduction that yield increasing confidence, as they reveal ever more about themselves. The ruse goes on to produce one of the most fascinating love poems of all time: Carta a Georgina Hubner en el cielo de Lima. Based on a true story, Spanish poet and writer Barcena's first novel transforms fact with cinematographic imagination, re-creating the scenery and moods of Lima at the turn of the twentieth century with inimitable precision. Barcena's historical novel has already received major prizes in Europe and will hopefully encourage English-language translation of his short story collection, Los que duermen (2012).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)