Book Review: Who Among Us?
Written By Grace Hessian
First published as Quién de Nosotros in 1953, Who Among Us? by Mario Benedetti follows the story of a love triangle. Having met as teenagers, Miguel and Alicia have been uncomfortably married for eleven years and Alicia has always felt that they are in a lull. Their friend Lucas views the world as a story to be told and distorts the mundane into art. As teenagers, Miguel and Alisha had a comfortable and quiet friendship before Alicia is animated by Lucas, and the two grow closer. And yet Alicia marries Miguel. The story follows the three members of the triangle in the past and present. First Miguel, as he provides his cynical view of the world through notebook musings, then Alicia in a letter to Miguel and finally Lucas in a story within a story. Lucas tells his perspective through a more aesthetic and fictionalised version of the truth, accompanied by footnotes of his present and truth-telling self where he discusses his story's plot as well as the art of story-telling.
Inside his head, Miguel is a side-lined character, despite the fact that he married Alicia. He verges on bitterness as he recounts how Lucas and Alicia must act when he is not present, but ultimately he is someone who just believes himself to be the side character. This belief infests his life until he actually does become the secondary character. Alicia is often shown as an object to lose and win and has by far the shortest narration time, yet in seven short pages, she proves herself to be so much more than her relationships with Miguel and Lucas. She is wise and angry and, most importantly, unapologetic. Lucas bends their circumstances into a beautiful story and even attempts to tell it from Alicia's perspective but accepts that he will never know what she is thinking. This contrasts with Miguel, who consistently thinks that he knows exactly what Alicia and Lucas are thinking and doing, to a point of arrogance. Luca's footnotes read like an adult looking back on a child's story with dry humour and they provide a light refresher for the reader.
This is a short story, just 100 pages, and is beautifully atmospheric. As the only three characters, there is nothing to be invested in but their lives and the story centres them in the universe so there is nothing else for the reader to care or think about.
This book can be found at the North Melbourne and Melbourne City Libraries.
“The fact is, art never ceases to be a lie; when it's true it's no longer art, and so it's boring, because reality is nothing more than irreparable, absurd tedium. But this turns everything into a blind alley for me. Real reality bores me, and art often strikes me as clever, but never effective or legitimate."