One has the feeling that Gregorio Casamayor (Cañadajuncosa, Cuenca, 1955) is an author who should be talked about more, and thus try to ensure that his books do not go too unnoticed, since they do not deserve it. Who knows if his sin was to win an award with his first novel (La sopa de Dios, 2009) in Gijón's Black Week, and thereby encourage his books to somehow be classified in the genre . And no, his novels, despite often having intrigues and criminals, are not what we usually expect from a crime novel. Luckily, Casamayor's novels transcend genre and contain a bit of a thriller, yes, but also a psychological novel, a social novel, even an urban novel… In short, like life itself. So in titles like The Life and Deaths of Ethel Jurado (2011), Broken Days (2018) or You're Dead, and You Know It (2021).
Casamayor also acts as a stupendous character portraitist, not only of those who stand as the supposed protagonists of the plot but also of a good number of supporting characters. And many of them are, above all, enormous victims of loneliness, of that loneliness that so many suffer in the contemporary city. (Los días rotos is possibly one of the best portraits of Barcelona in crisis in recent years).
In Búscame, his latest title, the author makes us take a leap and changes the Barcelona settings to which we were accustomed for that unofficial capital of the world that is New York and for the exclusive beaches of Cape Cod, a refuge for artists. The protagonist is a young successful photographer, Paul Knobel, but around him we find –as usually happens in other previous books– a collection of characters that make up a choral portrait of the world in which they live/survive, often victims of their decisions. but also of the circumstances or the imponderables. Characters united many of them by family ties. Thus, in Paul's web of relationships we find his mother, his stepfather, his partner project... But also Gloria, a dubbing actress whose lost personal diary Paul accidentally finds and around which a good part of the story will revolve. novel. And, as in other stories by Casamayor, here the diary also becomes an effective resource to articulate the narrative. Not only will it mark part of the intrigue –Paul looking for the author of the diary– but also what is told in it will connect the photographer with his own story, giving rise to rebuilding a life marked especially by the relationship with the mother of he.
Perhaps, more than a spider web, we should talk about a constellation of characters, since it is not difficult for many of them to imagine them as lonely stars trying to connect with other sparkles but most of the time without knowing how to do it. The "find me" in the title is, in this sense, nothing more than a cry for help pronounced by one of the characters, but which could very well be assumed by the others. Again, the solitudes of Casamayor. And if something differentiates these loners from the protagonists of previous books, it is that in the case of Búscame they are not affected by the economic hardships that conditioned the existence of other characters. But both of them, in Barcelona or in New York, in Manhattan or in the Eixample, are all rather lost. That they are found, or not, is part of the outcome plotted by the author.
Finally, a special guest in this novel should be highlighted, the North American painter Edward Hopper, who also spent long periods in Cape Cod, who fuels the passions of some of the characters and, above all, whose paintings of solitudes could very well illustrate these solitudes of Casamayor .
