The Dinner Guest
by Gabriela Ybarra
Translated by Natasha Wimmer
2018
4.0/5.0

In 1977, 3 terrorists broke into the home of Ybarras grandfather, pointing a gun at his head as he was taking a shower, he was kidnapped and the last time his family ever saw him. His kidnapping ended in a brutal murder that was printed in the press and media.
Ybarra was told this piece of family history at the age of 8. She is now grown and caring for her mother, dying of cancer. Her mothers death begins Ybarra to discover and uncover, more family history.

Although this is a work of fiction, it reads and feels like a true crime or non fiction memoir. An investigation of a women's past and her uncovered family history. Engaging, quick read. ( )

This is a tough one.

I did like reading this book, but it also left me very frustrated. It's autofiction, and autofiction drives the historian in me CRA-ZY. This story is--or is based on--the author's family. The first section is about the kidnapping and murder of her grandfather by Basque separatists, 6 years before she herself was born. The second half is about her mother's decline and death from colorectal cancer when the author was an adult--her mother's death led her to explore her grandfather's death, her father's having a a bodyguard for years, and her family's history as a Basque political family.

Which is all fascinating. Or it would be, if it were a memoir. It reads like a memoir, or even like essays on grief, medicine, death. But it isn't. It's a novel. But it doesn't read or feel like a novel--it is fairly cold, fact heavy (or is it?!), has photos, and transitions that feel awkward for a novel. As a fiction reader, it does not read like my kind of fiction. As a historian and memoir reader, it frustrates me. I was googling the Basque separatists (whom I was aware of but know little about), her grandfather, etc. But memoirs, letters, journals, drawings, photos, interviews, etc, can be great source material for historians. They give a voice to regular people who traditionally have not been heard from in history books. How to parse such sources is fascinating--what is included, what is left out, what is and isn't important to what populations. But autofiction--it has taken something that could be source material, and turned it into fake source material. It is intentionally hiding things, or embellishing things, or flat-out lying about things. There is no way to know. Why use real people and real events to write what is, essentially, a fake memoir? Just write a novel and make it as juicy or sad or mysterious or whatever as you want.
/rantoff ( )