Testimonials : Cristina

Dear Ángel,

Yesterday I finished reading the book I received by the hand of my dear friend. When Luana offered it to me kindly, she asked me to read it and then give my opinion. This message is my attempt to pay this debt.

Maybe you have noticed that I read these pages written by you in less than twenty-four hours. I believe that there are not many books that captivate the reader like this from the soul until the last paragraph. Forever Raquel was one of those rare cases and the life of this woman through your passionate retelling was the cause of my restlessness amidst this Carnival season.

An anthropologist called Ligia Sigaud once wrote that authors, despite their wishes, cannot control the way in which readers interpret their work. So making use and abuse of the freedom of my role as reader to interpret your writings, you can imagine how well I was able to perceive your Raquel's green eyes, her red-scarlet lipstick, her cheerful lack of inhibition. I tried to see her gestures, to hear her voice, her loud laughter. I thought it must have come from her the big generosity, which sometimes seems naive, that I have always admired in Luana. I confess I doubted of some fantastic tales, such as your adventures with the seven-meter-high waves in the beaches of Acapulco. But at the same time, I admired the courage that drove you to immortalize in the pages of a book a story made not only of pleasure and joy, but also of suffering and frustration.

Some time ago, when Luana told me about the departure of her mother and described to me the hard months prior to that sad day, I wondered what could possible drive a daughter and a husband to abandon the world outside to share the pain, try to relieve the suffering and face the impotence of such drama. For somebody like me who lives questioning the reasons for the human behavior, your book serves as evidence that there is a lot that we will never understand. Now, I have the feeling that despite our efforts to interpret love, it is something that has no place in the world of logical explanations, but which may, however, be vividly experienced by the fortunate ones.

Therefore, among all these written lines, what I read was your love – that feeling which manifests itself in such different ways, at times even shy, discreet. Whereas in the book I have just read, love was nothing but discreet. To me, your love for Raquel seemed as open as the attitude of a woman that in a restaurant stands up and alone starts dancing tango to then receive the applause of strangers in a faraway country.

Thank you for sharing so much.

With admiration,

Cristina