It is striking that in a peninsular country with two formidable archipelagos so little has been written about water. Reason to celebrate the publication of Thirst, a title that puts the most crucial liquid at the center. It is signed by Virginia Mendoza (Valdepeñas, 1987), a writer from La Mancha, where she grew up among adults who were very aware of the importance of caring for water, soaking up the curiosity and concerns that have inspired this book about how the absence of that element has influenced in his home and in humanity.
This is how ambitious the work is, which ranges from the appearance of water on Earth to the use of the jug, including human sacrifices to attract rain or a brief history of meteorology, among many other aspects that Mendoza displays with his vision of journalist-anthropologist open to mixing studies of archaeology, environmentalism, history or any discipline touched – and which is not – by water.
The superb prologue hints at a reading in which close experiences will seductively combine with statistics and stories about thirsty universals, but Mendoza immediately veers towards the informative essay based on the concatenation of data, details and symbolic stories, losing a certain literary charm. The accumulation of microhistories that happen in Egypt as well as in Australia or Terrinches works in a disparate way. Sometimes, the book flows, gallops, and other times (the least, it should be noted) it saturates, forcing us to jump at full speed from one geography to another, from one drought to another, accumulating myths, gods, wastelands, which are fruit, in any case. , a phenomenal investigation in which only more lines are missing about the impact of current climate change.
The spirit of embracing totality is part of the line of authors who publish in the same publishing house, from Jared Diamond to Lewis Dartnell, in addition to the natives Irene Vallejo or Juan Luis Arsuaga. The handicap is the transit through some archived territories: there are again the caves of Altamira or Lascaux, Darwin, the discovery of Lucy, Dian Fossey... And, although Mendoza always finds a link with thirst, sometimes it spins stories that are too unfocused of the central theme.
Everything changes when he rebels against historical dictates, daring, for example, to speculate on the beginning of agriculture in “the death throes of the Ice Age,” or when he points out that his grandmother's prayer, more than religion, is a way of caring. of many. Then, the book flies. By breathing fresh air into the data, and by slipping in stories that are as significant as they are unusual, he achieves vibrant pages that elevate the narrative.
Some things we learn. Islam expanded because of the drought. They say that “Basque comes from the Dogon and the relationship is due to the desertification of Africa.” Luke Howard classified clouds, influencing the painting of Constable or Turner, the poetry of Goethe and Shelley. In Don Quixote it rains, more or less, twice. Andrew Elicott Douglass discovered how to read the weather in tree rings, pioneering dendrochronology. Because Mendoza, particularly stimulated by the dead and language, introduces an arsenal of terms, and illustrates the origins of the word petrichor, talks about pluviomagia, choreomaniacs, antlophobia... associating those words with amazing stories that include assassinations, mass migrations , art to invoke rain…
La La Mancha proposes an interesting and extensive journey through our need to drink – and eat –, being singularly incisive when looking at the history of Spain, with San Isidro, lord of the waters, determining the capital of Madrid; the exploits of the dictator Paco el Rana, serial swamp maker; or the tandem of scarce water and despotism wreaking havoc on the country, with her grandmother, always, as the muse of thirst, as the guiding star of a book that one would say was destined to wet tongues and tongues.
Virginia Mendoza The Thirst Debate 272 pages 20.90 euros
