ALWAYS ONLINE
There is no doubt that social media is, nowadays, the way to communicate for teenagers, and for adults as well. Sometimes it is excessive, since we are losing face to face contact, we don’t listen, and everything is said through our phones, through the screens, without looking in the eyes, without facing the other. When written, and when the other person is not in front, everything seems easier, but it is a double-edged sword, since whatever is written, is never going to disappear. Those moments we did highly enjoy, as meeting our friends after a phone call are disappearing, since now only a WhatsApp is needed. A phone call for your birthday is no longer a requirement since a WhatsApp message does the job. It is getting harder and harder to listen to somebody’s voice, even at work, where most issues are handled via email. It is faster, of course, but human warmth is lost, proximity, and the feeling of feeling that person close to you. Words, tone, are crucial when understanding and through e-mail, they definitely cannot be equally understood. Screens are cold, making us become as cold as they are.
This is why David Lozano’s latest novel DESCONOCIDOS aims to show the good and the bad of these relationships established through social media. Lara and Wilde were meant to be perfect, their first date, after a few months chatting away, they would finally meet face to face. That same night the inspector Irene Castells investigates the murderer of a teenager whose face is completely smashed, and who carries a photograph in his jacket. David Lozano will play with the reader and the characters will take us to deep lands the reader won’t be able to leave. This book is such a page-turner, as the Americans claim, since you need to know what goes on in the following page, you need to know whether both stories are related or are, simply, parallel stories. The novel falls short, it moves fast and its clever plot twists, great for giving a panoramic perspective of what it means to always being online. It is absolutely amazing. An Edebé Award winning novel, well deserved, for a great author for a book which will delight young readers as well as those who are not so young. An entertaining novel, overall, but a novel which shows what is going on in our society in which a ‘like’ can be very harmful. Thank you, David, for creating such an amazing thriller, so voracious, a thriller which definitely teaches us many things.