The older brother - Daniel Mella

How can we narrate grief? Can we really rationalise death? Pain cannot be told in the present, only in the past; however, Mella chooses to narrate it in the future, as if everything bad is about to happen further down the line, until something reminds him that the future actually arrived a long time ago.
During the summer of 2014, on one of the stormiest days on record to hit the coast of Uruguay, 31-year old Alejandro, lifeguard and younger brother of our protagonist, dies after being hit by lightning. Combining memoir and fiction, this novel is the urgent exploration of the brotherly bond, and the effects that death has on our inner circles. An exploration that takes the author back into his past, and right into the centre of his obsessions.
'If I can't be free in my writing, I cannot be free anywhere else', admits the narrator towards the end of this fascinating book that interweaves fiction with brotherhood and grief at the centre of family relations.