A disappointing road trip through Berguedà

Patricia Martínez del Hoyo Guri studied humanities. A screenwriter and multifaceted creative, she is currently the head of EVA, the channel for 3Cat's generation Z. The novel We have lost ourselves is his literary debut. A debut that, unfortunately, shows too many of the flaws of many first work: the migrated development of the characters, a poorly structured plot, an irregular rhythm, the excessive exposition of information and of a subject matter that is too heterogeneous, the lack of revision and editing that affect coherence and, above all, a language that is poorly elaborated on a literary level.

The plot ofWe have lost ourselves The story is simple: in 2024 Marc disappears from San José (San Francisco) and everyone thinks he has fled in search of "the girl". Xavi, a friend from his teenage years with whom he shared a flat in Gràcia and who receives the call from Marc's snobbish wife, begins a journey from Sabadell to Berga, where Julia is, Marc's youthful love. He knows little about her, only that she lives in a house with a goat. Also in the car is Blanca, Marc's girlfriend, ten years younger and a clinical psychology student, and Txell, the depressed neighbour (now she only listens to El Pot Petit and needs to escape at all costs) with a six-month-old baby called Gala. The latter's mission is to road trip It is a far-fetched and aesthetically awkward experience to find Marc, but on a second level of reading, of a more psychological nature, everyone is looking for a meaning to life, who they were, who they wanted to be and who they have ended up becoming. In this case, the novel does not dig deep enough.

Tender, comical and topical

Barcelona, ​​San Francisco, Santiago de Chile, Formentera or Berga are the settings for this story of generational love and friendship that is built on the basis of clichés that we have seen ad nauseum in American teen series or comedies. With a choral narration, we enter into the interior of each character and their vital crisis, which is tender and comical in equal parts, like the reality that the author presents to us. From a pretended humorous fiction that is quite basic, the current oral language of young people (rude, with swear words, emoticons, anglicisms, etc.), without flourishes or literary pretensions, with some spelling and grammatical errors, and with a fundamentally dialogued and unmeticulous style. ion in an increasingly fragmented world. It does so through various points of view always in the first person, and this is interesting to round out the puzzle: a single story, many ways of being there. The same goes for the time jumps: from 2024 back to 1995 and forward to 2032. But perhaps it wasn't necessary to structure the book in four parts and an epilogue. It gets long.

The problem is that everything is too obvious, too predictable and, despite the minimal intrigue, the author doesn't quite round out the characters or the relationships between them. She simply presents a story that combines dramatic elements with agile prose that is entertaining, yes. As the characters advance on their journey, they are forced to face their fears, their past decisions and the consequences that these have had on their lives. They are in a constant state of searching. And this is where the novel could have scratched a lot more. Research as a classic literary theme is very small in We have lost ourselves, a novel with a bifocal title that could have given more of itself in this sense and not wander so much through clichés and a language that, at a certain age, is no longer molar.