Vox Gibraltar News: Local Writer Praised by UK Critics

Local Writer Praised by UK Critics
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vox on 17 January, 2007 08:00


Local writer M. G. Sanchez has recently had his work favourably reviewed in the
UK literary press. His novel, Rock Black 0-10, has been commended in an article
by Rob Stanton (Green Integer), one of the UK's leading poets and a recipient of
the The PIP Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative Poetry in English 2005. Stanton
applauds Sanchez's 'skillful' integration of subject matter and finishes by
hoping that 'more and more people will read [this book],' seeing it as
'necessary corrective to a prolonged silence.' In a separate development, the
book has also been reviewed by Leeds Student Newspaper, the UK's largest student
periodical with a weekly circulation of 15, 000. In it Lauren Blyth praises the
way Sanchez 'successfully manages to portray the varying emotions felt by
Gibraltarians… who are neither fully English nor Spanish' and describes
the book as 'an enjoyable read and worth a look at if you have an interest in
Spanish or Gibraltarian history.' Sanchez has recently published a second book
by the title of Writing the Rock of Gibraltar: An Anthology of Literary Texts
(ISBN 0955246512). Described by the publishers as the largest anthology of
historical and literary writings on Gibraltar ever assembled, Writing the Rock
is a 300 page, fully-illustrated hardback volume and will be available for sale
in Gibraltar at the beginning of February. Below we print the entire review by
Rob Stanton. Rock Black 0-10 is currently on sale at the Gibraltar Bookshop and
other local bookshops and is priced at just over nine pounds.
Review of Rock Black 0-10 by Rob Stanton
My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I
chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of
paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of
its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. The stories are
arranged in this order.
This is how James Joyce explained the thinking behind his debut collection of
interlinked short stories, Dubliners, published in 1907. Almost a century later,
Rock Black 0-10, M. G. Sanchez's first work of fiction, also made up of
interlinked short stories, has a similar diagnostic tendency, this time applied
to Sanchez's native Gibraltar, seen in the late '80s and early '90s. This too is
a 'centre of paralysis' and if Sanchez's work doesn't quite cover the gamut of
'childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life' it gains by its focus. All
of Rock Black's protagonists are male, and most are caught at some point on a
perilous spectrum between 'adolescence' and 'maturity', old to know they must
stop drifting, but unsure of how to set aside booze, cheap talk, lost chances
and lost loves (often symbolically - but never too symbolically - British) in
order to do something more constructive; or what that would even be if they
could. Their surroundings are part of the problem: Gibraltar is depicted as
similarly unsure of its identity and position in the world, claimed by both
Britain and Spain, culturally indebted to both and yet unloved and disrespected
by Briton and Spaniard alike. Illicit attractions and distractions are available
- binge drinking, macho camaraderie, trips to brothels on the Costa del Sol,
smuggling - but the characters know, or become aware, that they are empty. Old
supports, such as family or religion, are seen as hollow, whilst new ones, such
as psychoanalysis, are vapid. The book's title derives from the security states
laid out by Gibraltar Fortress HQ: 'Rock Red' being the highest state of alert,
'Rock Yellow' 'a state of increased vigilance' and 'Rock Black', in the words of
the character explaining, 'the same old s**t as always'.
Despite all this, the majority of Sanchez's characters, including recurring
alter ego Peter Rodriguez, seem forever poised on the verge of epiphany, of a
seeing of other alternatives. In some of the book's most uplifting moments these
possibilities take on an almost uncanny, supernatural edge, as a father
amazingly puts aside his long-time alcoholism to become a jogger, an
accidentally tuned-into radio show on addiction  proves inspirational, an
improbable magician can shrug off the jibes of his (tellingly, British)
assailants to dispense stoical wisdom or the previously jaded Rodriguez can take
seriously an elderly fisherman's tale of seeing a mermaid. Sanchez injects these
moments skillfully into his narratives without ever swapping the stories'
prevalent naturalism for magic realism. Even the one story that sets aside the
realistic, 'Freefalling', is playful and down-to-earth in its allegorical
overtones and fits right in. Escape, change, difference are not altogether
impossible then, but the advent of their possibility is fleeting and easy to
miss.
As a British reviewer, one wonders what readers in Gibraltar will make of this
book. Will they be 'indifferent', as Joyce feared his fellow Irish would be?
Will they be grateful that part of their past and culture has been rendered
visible in literature for the first time? Or will they, like plenty of Joyce's
initial readers, resent their dirty linen being aired in public? Whichever way,
one hopes that more and more people will read it: it appears as a necessary
corrective to a prolonged silence.
Rob Stanton, a UK-born poet and critic, currently lives and works in Savannah,
Georgia. He has a website called Copy (www.sonofissue.blogspot.com) and is
included in The PIP Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative Poetry in English 2005.