Papers in the Wind by Eduardo Sacheri

Published in Argentina in 2011; published in translation by Other Press on May 20, 2014

As Papers in the Wind opens, Mono Raguzzi has just been buried in a cemetery in Castelar, a city in Buenos Aires Province. His death is being mourned by his brother Fernando and his friends Mauricio and Ruso. Mono had a short-lived career in professional soccer before joining a Swiss technology firm. After leaving that job to spend more time his daughter, he used his severance pay to buy the transfer rights to a soccer player, Mario Pittilanga. Now his brother and friends are wondering what to do with Pittiglana, who (to put it mildly) has not lived up to his potential.

Papers in the Wind slides around in time. Some chapters show us Mono before his death, struggling to find himself after his soccer career ended, dealing with the shaky relationship with his girlfriend Lourdes that produced Guadalupe, his daughter, or coming to terms with the end of his life and of his lifelong friendships. Other chapters take place in the present as Mono's friends and brother try to work out a scheme to save Mono's investment in Pittiglana while convincing Lourdes to give them time with Guadalupe.

The four key characters have well-defined, consistent personalities. Facing death, Mono focuses on what has always been important in life -- friends, family, and soccer. Mauricio is a driven, self-centered lawyer who cheats on his wife and does his best to avoid the obligations of friendship. Ruso's marital strife is caused by his failure at every business he starts, but he is affable and a master at avoiding conflict. Fernando, a teacher, is so honorable that he drives his friends crazy. Whether the friendships will survive Mono's death is a question that becomes more urgent as divided loyalties begin to divide the friends. Each character will learn something about himself and about the nature of friendship before the novel concludes.

The politics of soccer in South America (and worldwide) are fascinating, even to a reader (like me) who doesn't give two hoots about the game itself. Oddly enough, while I'm not a soccer fan, I tend to enjoy soccer novels, in part because the writers usually convey their passion for the game, in part because they are often populated by passionate characters. As Mono approaches death, for instance, the one thing he wants to leave his daughter is his love for the local soccer team. That's a true fan. He also draws parallels between his life and the performance of that team -- a team of championship caliber before it began a steady decline. Like dying, supporting a losing team (and hoping for unlikely victories) gives you a better sense of what's important in life. It isn't winning championships. It's love of the game that counts -- and "the game" is everything in your life that matters to you.

With its discussions of death and theology, friendship and betrayal, love and romance, there is chewy meat on the bones of a novel that is also light-hearted and funny. The plot follows a curvy path that leaves the reader wondering whether the journey will terminate at a pleasant destination. I won't comment on that, but I will say that Papers in the Wind is a sad, funny, and meaningful book that I enjoyed from beginning to end.

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The Secret in Their Eyes by Eduardo Sacheri

First published in Spanish in 2005; published in translation by Other Press on October 18, 2011

I wouldn't call The Secret in Their Eyes a thriller (although it develops some thrills toward the end), or even a mystery. The novel tells a very personal story of one man's role in the Argentinean system of criminal justice, his mild obsession with an unsolved murder, and the difficulty of pursuing the truth in a corrupt political regime.

Facing a lonely, dreaded retirement from his life as a deputy court clerk, Benjamín Chaparro decides to fill his time writing the story of Ricardo Morales. When they first meet (in the 1960s), Chaparro is overseeing the investigation of Morales' pregnant wife's rape and murder. The two men form a bond. Morales is, like Chaparro, a morose man who prefers rainy days to sunshine, who looks at photographs and feels a sense of loss for the "vanished paradise" they depict. Yet Chaparro envies Morales because Morales has experienced true love, while Morales drifts through relationships, marrying and divorcing, never content.

Chaparro harbors a secret love for a former co-worker named Irene, a judge who, thanks to his retirement, is no longer part of his daily life. Writing of unrequited love is, I think, a South American specialty, and Eduardo Sacheri does it masterfully. I could feel Chaparro's fears and regrets, his heartache -- "the ache of stifled feelings" -- in my bones. As Chaparro compares his life to Morales', the contrast is between a love kept hidden and a love lost: each tragic in its own way. Neither man knows how to live the rest of his life: Morales without the wife he loved, Chaparro without the joy of seeing Irene every day.

The murder investigation, such as it is, drags on for years, spurred forward by Chaparro's intuition and later by a fortuitous confrontation between a railroad conductor and the murder suspect. A third of the novel remains when the crime is solved, another sign that the investigation is secondary to the real story; a happy ending would not be true to the lives of either Chaparro or Morales. The novel then raises an intriguing moral question -- how much self-sacrifice should be expected from Chaparro to save Morales from harm? -- and concludes with a satisfying (if not entirely unexpected) twist as the secret of Morales' life is revealed.

I like the way the story is structured, the story within a story: Chaparro ponders the book he's writing (what scenes should he include or omit, whether the book is about Morales or himself), a story that Sacheri wraps around the novel that Chaparro actually writes; the reader benefits from reading both Chaparro's novel and the story of its creation. Sacheri indulges in a bit of political commentary (he has little good to say about Organía's military regime) but the novel isn't a polemic. It is instead a subtle, nuanced, absorbing look at the intersection of two lives and the difficult choices made by two decent men, with the addition of a beautifully unresolved romance (a story carefully designed to continue in the reader's mind after the novel ends).

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