The location of the jungle is never mentioned in Julianne Pachico’s second novel, but readers familiar with her novels know that it is her collection of short stories. The lucky ones (2017) and her first novel Anthill (2020) takes place in Colombia, where she grew up. Join the conversation Jungle house about guerrilla warfare between communist rebels and the national army, as well as militant environmental groups, reinforces the sense that Pachico, without naming a name, is again writing about Colombia.
Regardless of which tropical country the novel is set in, it is set in a future where artificial intelligence is more advanced than anything that is still part of our daily lives. Lena, main character Jungle housewas raised by robots, especially by a controlling mother who describes herself as “a bulwark of light against the army of darkness” and warns of the threat posed by “potential combatants”.
Lena never left the territory of the remote jungle house where she lived with her mother for twenty years. They look after the home of the Morels, a plantation family with ties to the government. There are other robots in the house, such as Silvana and Alfonso, who are nearing the end of their lives, but they used to cook “delicious dinners outdoors on the grill and in the wood-burning oven” when the morels from “town” came to visit. .
The Morels stopped visiting them after their daughter Isabella disappeared. This event is one of the mysteries of the novel, as is the origin of the binoculars that Lena found in the bushes: “If these binoculars are neither from the family, nor from the army, nor from the seekers, then the only one. Another. A reasonable explanation is that they come from an insurgent, a person who has been here and nearby, and not so long ago.
However, the main mystery of the plot is Lena’s origin. Her mother tells her: “I found you. There, next to a pile of garbage,” he added, Lena was “wrapped in a blanket covered with fish scales.” Mother claims that Lena was abandoned by her rebellious parents, but it is obvious that there is more to the story and Mother is withholding important information.
Pachico writes about the jungle with authority and feeling, immersing the reader in its natural beauty and wildlife (“fighting howler monkeys”) and its dangers: “The water contains electric eels, anacondas and rapids, which can create waves that hit their bodies. Can.” each other. Rocks.” But some of the AI elements, including a talking drone named Anton, a network of all-seeing satellites and the ability to play back the robots’ recorded memories “with a button on the back of the head,” are a little basic. .
Literary fiction about the future can seem strangely old-fashioned. It sometimes seems that writers’ imaginations, when it comes to the possibilities and dangers of technology, have stagnated at some point around the time that George Orwell and Aldous Huxley wrote. Kazuo Ishiguro Clara and the sun suffer from this problem and Jungle house does this too. Pachico deals with these themes best when he keeps things simple, such as when Anton asks himself, “Was this freedom?” The ability to think about things he shouldn’t think about?
The most poignant aspect Jungle house it is the universality of Lena’s desire to find out who she is, where she comes from, and her awareness that this means challenging her mother’s version of events. Many people have to do this when they reach adulthood. It may be a messy and painful reckoning, just like Lena’s, but her story shows that love can still wait on the other side. There is nothing artificial about this.
Source: I News
I am Mario Pickle and I work in the news website industry as an author. I have been with 24 News Reporters for over 3 years, where I specialize in entertainment-related topics such as books, films, and other media. My background is in film studies and journalism, giving me the knowledge to write engaging pieces that appeal to a wide variety of readers.