Sunday 15 March 2020

Lola Vendetta y Los Hombres

by Raquel Riba Rossy

I learned about Lola thanks to Lila (pun intended) and, naturally, took this book home as soon as I saw it in the library. I read it in a couple of hours. What can I say? It’s funny, it’s bold, its black-white-red drawings are gorgeous, and... with a protagonist like Lola, you can’t go wrong really. It even does have its own soundtrack (see below). I’d love to recommend it without reservations; as it happens, I do have some.

There’s a Russian idiom «начать за здравие, а кончить за упокой» which, I think, is appropriate here. (I’m still looking for a decent English equivalent. In a meantime, I can offer the German “Als Tiger starten und als Bettvorleger landen”.) You see, Lola Vendetta is a comic heroine and as such is imaginary. Her deeds are exaggerated, as comic deeds tend to be. No matter how satisfying it is to see Lola dispatching the members of a “manada” with her trusty katana — look, I am against violence, and I’m telling you, it is satisfying — we all understand that this is not real. Yet this is how things are done in Lola’s world. On the contrary, when Lola finally hangs up her sword (after finding, um, a cuddly boy she would like to keep), it feels utterly false. Worse still, the book ends with a pathetic “Letter to men” where Lola declares that she does not want to fight anymore. So who, if I can ask, is gonna fight? Didn’t our brother Bob Marley command otherwise?

But there is always a hope for lovers of swift comic justice. I spy your sword in a “break glass in case of emergency” cabinet. It’s only a matter a time, Lola, only a matter a time.

Ah, yes: the soundtrack. When I opened the book, I saw Amparo Sánchez, Chambao, Jorge Drexler — wow, this lady knows what to listen to. (There is no QR code like in Mala mujer, just the names of the songs and artists on the pages. I prefer it this way.) I don’t care much about the likes of Michael Jackson or Meghan Trainor, however there are many other artists whom I am only starting to discover now thanks to Lola.

Posted by Kirill at 00:00
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