The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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Lightning strikes painful familial chords in Uruguay
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
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Older Brother
by Daniel Mella
(Charco Press, £12.99)
EARLY on a February morning in 2014, during a violent summer storm at a beach near Piriapolis in Uruguay, lightning strikes the lifeguard tower where Alejandro is sleeping. It kills the 31-year-old musician and surfer and injures his girlfriend Ana Laura.
[[{"fid":"6988","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]What happens next is the focus of this work, part-fiction, part-autobiography, by Uruguayan novelist Daniel Mella, who is Alejandro’s older brother.
His narrative, dwelling on the sudden loss of a sibling, ponders the latter's transient relationships with girls, his love of music, surfing and travelling, along with the abrupt changes his early death brings to their supposedly close-knit family.
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