Book Review: Luciano by Humbert Hernandez

By Giordano Durante

After several years of regularly producing books of short stories (published in the four volumes of Historias de Gibraltar) and the entertaining Mis Patios Perdidos, the Gibraltarian author Humbert Hernandez has released his first full-length novel. Luciano packs into its over 300 pages the experiences of Luciano Chesterfield, a young Gibraltarian man who goes to London where he finds a job as a teacher.

The novel opens with Luciano trying to eke out a living in London. By chance he meets Carlos, a linense with whom he shares a language (Hernandez authentically creates their Andalusian Spanish dialogue), a culture and some of that warmth from back home which he misses in the metropolis.

The move to London represents freedom from the suffocating strictures of 1960s Gibraltar where “Todo había que revelarlo, discutirlo, madurarlo, repensarlo y asegurarlo en conjunto con la familia.

En fin, se hacía la situación algo difícil.” Carlos echoes this feeling: “Y yo aquí en este gran Londres me siento como un pájaro, libre, libre, libre.” Luciano finds a job as a teacher in a Maida Vale Catholic school, an experience that is “…su bautismo de fuego, pero también su corona de gloria.” It is in these scenes where the main character really develops.

Luciano emerges as a conscientious educator, passionate about his subjects and the welfare of his students — he is also highly individualistic: “No quería sentirse obligado a nada ni a nadie. Para Luciano eso era primordial. Pensaba que la libertad empezaba por uno mismo, interiormente."

Luciano and his friend Carlos navigate numerous obstacles and mishaps in London and there is something particularly alluring for a Gibraltarian readership to encounter the familiar streets and sights of the capital through the eyes and minds of Spanish-speaking characters.

At one point a character buys fish and chips and is then reminded of a line from Lorca, for example, and this bilingual and bicultural aspect of Gibraltarian experience — soon to be something of the past, sadly — is well captured throughout. Like other works in Hernandez’s oeuvre, Luciano constitutes a fictional chronicle of a certain time in our history, regardless of whether the events depicted are flattering to our national self-image: the ‘Palomos' / ‘Doves’ riots of 1968 are alluded to, as is the campaign to end military conscription in which the author was prominently involved.

The feverish political climate among Spaniards abroad, still under the yoke of the Francoist dictatorship, and the closure of the Gibraltar-Spain frontier, also overshadow the novel and are steady sources of tension and excitement.

These fictional explorations of historical events have a valuable place in our study of these pivotal moments — rather than mere inventions they are, more often than not, the carefully matured reflection of people who lived through these episodes in our past.

Although a work of fiction, Luciano has obvious autobiographical elements and is all the stronger for it. For example, there’s this bleak image of the Rock right after the frontier gates were locked: “El Gibraltar que Luciano encontró a finales de julio del ’69 al bajar del avión era muy distinto al que había dejado atrás hace unos meses en las Navidades del ’68. Por empezar, no se veían trabajadores españoles con sus típicas bicicletas y con sus bolsos de gutapercha para el costo ni, por consiguiente, tampoco tenía lugar el trapicheo de contrabando de tabaco, café, mantequilla y demás comestibles. También habían desaparecido los autobuses azules y blancos que transitaban entre la Plaza del Reloj y la frontera; el ferry de Algeciras a Gibraltar también había sido cesado.”

We may read a history of the closure of the border but never encounter its desolating effect conveyed in such detail. Hernandez shares a trait with the major Latin American novelists: there’s an unstoppable urge here to tell stories packed with incident, twists and emotional climaxes.

It is a novel where the narrative shifts are the real engines, rather than descriptive passages or a philosophical inner monologue. Having said that, it was enjoyable to see Hernandez settle into a more expansive scene-setting than that permitted by the restrictions of the short story format and the independent vignette style he used for Mis Patios Perdidos.

In Luciano, he allows his prose to acquire a steady, unfussy rhythm that whisks the reader along the paths of its ambitious plot. There are a few didactic moments in the novel, particularly when Luciano explains, at length, some point regarding the history of art or opera or literature to the less culturally literate Carlos but these moments never drag — in fact, the reader is happy to learn something himself and share some of that passion for these art forms which, we can assume, is one that has its source in the author.

One example of how the author’s life has fed into this novel is the insight Hernandez provides into the practice of rehearsal when Luciano directs a production of the Lorca play Mariana Pineda with his students. Readers familiar with Hernandez’s work will note that his ability to conjure humourous turns of phrase and similes remains undimmed — we have here the immediately memorable “más contento que una tortuga con ruedas”.

Hernandez also continues to be one of the leading local writers to focus on the human body and its functions, a skill in evidence when he describes the sexual exploits of Carlos, the more libertine of the pair. In the aftermath of an amorous encounter, Carlos is described as follows: “…olía a mondongo descompuesto y a gandinga vieja. Todos esos revuelcos, cabriolas sexuales, los sudores e intercambio de flujos y olores corporales, todo eso lo llevaba impreso en su piel.”

Hernandez successfully avoids Rabelaisian excess in these moments and tempers it with the cultivation of the relationship between Luciano and Carlos, a deeply human connection that is shot through with emotional realism, with Carlos at one point saying: “Eres como un hermano para mí y los hermanos nunca se olvidan.”

Under one interpretation, Carlos and Luciano represent two sides of one person or two different possible lives and paths that one person could take: Carlos is physically and sexually adventurous; Luciano is more reserved and intellectual.

It is the bond between Luciano and Carlos, the emotional heart of the novel, that leaves the deepest impression on the reader — Hernandez can do political history, crude bodily functions and humour but Luciano emerges above all as a fully realised picture of human relationships and vulnerability, a meditation on the very meaning of friendship.

This moving and often turbulent novel will not disappoint.

Luciano will be on sale as from Wednesday, December 4 at the Fine Arts Gallery from 10am till 1pm. The author will be there to sign copies for those interested. Subsequently, it will be on sale locally at the Gibraltar Heritage Bookshop and at BookGem as from the afternoon of December 4. It will also be available from all Amazon outlets: Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.es and Amazon.com.