«The Only Possible Place» is a book written in prose by Salvador Garmendia in which the fleeting transition between dream and wakefulness of a single character is interwoven. This character moves through commonplace settings such as hotels, sanatoriums, funeral homes, towns, circuses, and so on—in short, ordinary places. The transitions occur suddenly and without logical order, with descriptions rendered as textures like dust, smells such as rancidness and dampness, and contrasts of light and shadow. Ultimately, it is a bloody, somewhat pornographic, and rocambolesque narrative—that is, one filled with complicated, strange, and highly improbable events.
One notable line is: “each person feels like the owner of their own energy as if they were a small world, and also carries within them their own terror at the thought of being unique in their kind.”
I’m not sure I would recommend this work by Garmendia, despite his mastery of prose; it ultimately depends on the reader’s taste. It is a work where the real and the imaginary, textures, smells, and flavors blend together—but in a decadent and bloody sense, both logical and absurd.
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