Titles in the series: Tears in Rain, Weight of the Heart, Los Tiempos del Odio
Recently struggling to create lists of outstanding female SF authors and great non-English SF, having Rosa Montero on my radar has been a piece of good fortune on both counts. Montero, a Spanish mainstream author whose SF books are limited to the Bruna Husky series, is renowned in Spain, but she is surprisingly unknown in the English-speaking fiction universe: having scrolled through a large number of Internet entries on best female/non-English SF authors, I’m perplexed by the total lack of mention. Tears in Rain and Weight of the Heart have been translated and published in English – so where are the readers?
But that’s what makes creating my own lists such fun. And truth to be added, I’ve discovered Rosa Montero completely by accident, on a stifling hot night in an airbnb in Leon, northern Spain, searching the flat for anything to read and finding nothing else but “Lagrimas en la Lluvia”, a book that by title (Tears in Rain) sounded like a piece of banal romantic fiction. If not for desperate insomnia, I would have never opened it.
But it became clear from page one that romance it isn’t, and banal even less. Protagonist Bruna Husky is a genetically enhanced combat specialist who lives in 22nd century Madrid, works as a private detective and faces a cruelly short lifespan, threatened to be cut even shorter by a new plague of madness among “techno-humans”. The three books evolve along classic plot elements from private detective investigations to uncovering conspiracies to rescue missions. At times, the plot feels like just an excuse to spend time in a fascinating, dark future. All three books are immensely atmospheric, rich in sensorial detail: we accompany Bruna as she runs in Madrid’s “lung parks”, eats algae sandwiches in neighbourhood bars, hosts alien pets, orders breakfast by drone delivery, crosses the city on moving walkways – and this is just her everyday life, when she is not off to adventures in the contaminated zones or draconian floating kingdoms.
This immersive world is inhabited by Bruna’s friends and enemies (plus those who fall in both groups), who help drive forward our “techno-human” protagonist’s character development. We are also welcome to Bruna’s mind in a very intimate manner, experience the world from her perspective – how would it feel to be a phenomenally strong, tattooed warrior, a member of a reviled minority, a feared and hated outsider? Seeing the world – ourselves – from Bruna’s perspective is a disquieting reminder that there are many walking among us today who experience the same fear and loathing. The more things change, the more they remain the same in this account of the 22nd century: political groups whipping up hatred against minorities for their political gain is as sickeningly familiar as the indignity of poverty or the barely-life existence in contaminated wastelands for the planet’s unluckiest.
Getting this privileged access to Bruna’s mind also opens a wide array of philosophical reflections, made personal and concrete by experiencing them through her feelings: how much of our identity is based on our memories? Can as few as 500 memories create a valid human personality? If you can create/alter/falsify memories, does it mean you can create or falsify identities, lead people to commit actions contrary to their original nature? What if you meet a person with exactly the same childhood memories as yours?
For all its dystopian nature, Tears in Rain is not a cruel book, not a landscape of suffering that would make you wish Earth to be pulverised by a meteorite. In the darkness, Montero still sees light, and ultimately the books are about hope – hope to be still able to connect to others, prevail over hatred, and keep our dignity. Hope and just a glint of humour occasionally – despite the heavy substance, it makes the reading light.
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