Title

Within the hidden corners of the mind, strengths are hampered by weakness of habits. These restrict accomplishments.

María Luisa Lazzaro. Internal strife: the body’s ongoing struggle.

Writing a prologue to Taxi to Hell gives me the opportunity to say more about this work which my dear Antonio Lagares wrote a few years ago. Recently I had the opportunity to read this novel to write a description. Reading it immediately engaged me by the way the principal characters are immersed within themselves and in this way offer a window so that the perceptive reader can discern the deep emotions they strive to hide. The underlying and prolonged study of each character is offered at the beginning of the game. It must be clarified here that this resource, far from distracting, obliges the reader to participate in the staging that Antonio is creating with irony and humor.

Taxi to Hell is a sample of Antonio’s style, fascinated with the human psyche and its mysteries. It should be noted that this is his first novel and foreshadows the style of his later literary creations. Antonio contributes a richness to a fictional ambiance, supported by realism. It is the core of his proposals: to give impetus from where to start to develop the fiction which he seeks to recreate in the mind, in his dramas, in the darkest part of human thought. Antonio Lagares’ writing is a torrent of images which interrelate, thanks to the association which he establishes between the diferent contexts appearing in the narration. He maintains a fluid rhythm in the dynamically woven story inviting constant reinterpretation of the different clues the characters leave along the way.

From its beginning, within the gloomy walls of a reformatory, the plot indicates that this is not a self-indulgent novel. It is not a magic mirror where the readers can view their happy selves. Taxi to Hell tells of a segment in the life of Damian, a conflicted adolescent nicknamed El Manitas. This impetuous young man travels with Manuel, a taxi driver with whom he gets mixed up in a duel of manipulations which drags them into an unforseen outcome. Antonio inserts a thread of hide and seek which allows sensing a purpose in showing the relationship between life and death: the eternal Eros-Thanatos in eternal struggle. Of course the analogies are subjective, therefore my view of Taxi to Hell is is unique and follows my enthusiasm about the novel. I make this annotation because the story of El Manitas has meaning on various levels and each reader will gravitate to these imaginary beings from his own value system and will form his own opinion about this work. I won’t go on more about my appreciation because now is the time to get inside the winding threads of the minds of the characters who walk through these pages full of unsuspecting adventures.