Domingo Villar was a Spanish writer who prematurely passed away in May this year, aged 51. He had specialized on noir fiction. And very successfully so. His Galician trilogy –Ojos de agua, La playa de los ahogados, El último barco– has received a lot of praise from literary critics and the public alike.
I had met Domingo –Mincho to his friends– briefly, when I was a kid, during those long summers when many families from Vigo would spend long stints in Playa América and other surrounding beaches to be found in the generous bay where the city is located, on the northwestern coast of Spain.
In people’s teen years relatively small age differences tend to have a big impact. In our case, three years meant that I felt he lived in a different planet, befriending instead his younger brothers and sister. Then, years later, I was one of the eager readers who jumped at Ojos de agua, his first novel, and devoured it.
When I finished the reading, I came away slightly disappointed. Possibly a factor of the high expectations placed in reading a book with a plot located in places you know well, and by an author for whom –his entire family, really– you profess undisguised sympathy. I could not escape the feeling that, whilst a perfectly reasonable effort, with a beautiful use of language, Domingo’s first published book was more a minor than a major feat.
Then, the news coverage of his abrupt death whilst accompanying and taking care of his sick mother, back in Vigo, saddened me greatly. Besides the evident nostalgia in seeing a bit of your own past erode into an ugly sense of nothingness, I felt i should have followed closer his course as a published novelist. So, I read La playa de los ahogados and then, immediately after, El último barco.
The two feelings earlier described –longing, unease– quickly dissolved into a different, overarching one: unjust underappreciation. The sequence of three books follows a marked upward trajectory in literary merit, I found. Almost a factor of their escalating length –192, 448, and 712 pages, respectively–. La playa de los ahogados is a great novel. And, whilst noir is not my go-to genre, I will say that El último barco was as gripping, purposeful, and well written as you would expect any masterpiece to be.
I find odd comfort, the type you want to celebrate, in concluding that during his unreasonably short lifetime Mincho grew to become a masterful writer of fiction. As, in some abstract way, I figure it should be the case when you add such honest dedication to the talented intelligence he always possessed. A befitting achievement for a person who was so thoroughly loved and will be so sorely missed.
