Kae Tempest and the search for a place in the world

There are novels with prose so heavy, with such a slow rhythm and such a short breath that the pages seem to wheeze with sedentary overweight. The prose of the novel Tota la vida buscant, by Kae Tempest (London, 1985), a very recognized name in the world of poetry, dramaturgy, and rhapsody, aims to be the complete opposite: agile, strong, cutting, tense, between electric lyricism, frontal narration, and raw realism. Sometimes Kae Tempest does not succeed in their purpose, and then they produce telegraphically anemic descriptions and repetitive passages, of a paralyzing prolixity. Other times they do achieve it, however, and then the novel vibrates with that authenticity that we usually attribute to things, people, and works not distorted by gratuitous sophistication or spurious intentions.The protagonist of the novel – I write it this way because the central character, Rothko, is non-binary, just like the author, and also because, beyond the opinion each reader may have about inclusive language, literature is always an exercise in personal creativity and expressiveness, and therefore Tempest is as legitimized as Joyce to do whatever she wants with the language– is thirty-six years old and has just returned to her town after spending fifteen years in prison. The panorama she finds there is just as desolate and depressing as when she had to leave: a junkie mother in total process of degradation; a failed and absent father; an affectionate but difficult sister... Furthermore, Rothko lives a double malaise, which has to do with her theoretically already overcome addictions and with her inability to feel fully as she is in her female body.The novel is divided into three parts, and unfolds like an omniscient panorama of which Rothko is the simultaneously afflicted and hopeful axis. In the first part, we witness Rothko's re-establishment of contact with his former world and his old life. Tempest describes very well Rothko's costly adaptation to freedom, his shame and helplessness in the face of a present that frightens him, and she also manages to paint in a very genuine and natural way the whole galaxy of wounded, damaged, poor, and often marginal supporting characters who swarm around his world. Where Tempest's talent shines brightest is in the synthetic narration of situations and the expressive exploration of personalities. In this regard, the pages about Rothko's parents, Ezra and Meg, why they are the way they are, what relationship they have maintained between them, are exceptional.Towards the redemptive culmination

The second part of the novel takes place twenty years earlier, and introduces us to Rothko as an adolescent, uncomfortable and out of place because she is a girl who wants to be a boy but dares not admit it. Although it also has emotional and strong passages, it is more conventional, like a typical coming-of-age novel: a decaying and unsupportive family environment, pleasure and vice, ambient homophobia, love and sex with a girl who understands her... In the third part, Tempest returns to the present and recovers the rhythm and plasticity of her best prose, and, with a melodramatic touch, offers a redemptive atonement and culmination, of possible reconstruction, for Rothko.The idea that art should have no function beyond being powerful and complex is very modern and perfectly legitimate and defensible, but it is also evident that it is an artistic conception that sometimes stems from the privilege of hegemony. I mean that Tempest, in her condition as a non-binary person who has already completed the complicated and painful process that the protagonist is considering undertaking, has also written this book to guide and explain. There are quite didactic dialogues, which are noticeably written to offer accompaniment and care to those who need it. One of the great things about good literature is that it makes familiar what is initially strange, and this Tota la vida buscant achieves it.