“El cuco de cristal”, by Javier Castillo, the novel that closes the trilogy of “The Snow Maiden”

When the name of the writer Javier Castillo begins to resound strongly among the readers, it is because a real earthquake is about to occur. Whenever a new book by him is placed on the new release tables of the various bookstores in Spain and Latin America, it is only a matter of time before it climbs among the best sellers.

This was the case with its previous titles and we expect no less for the most recent, than with the Netflix series on “The Snow Maiden”It will surely be on everyone’s lips.

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An emergency transplant and a donor who hides a considerable number of delicate secrets are the prelude to the new novel of Javier Castillowhere he takes readers to the streets of contemporary New York, before the covid-19 pandemic, in 2017.

Cora Merlo has a sudden heart attack while a first-year medical resident. Suddenly, he has to undergo a heart transplant. In convalescence, he is visited by a singular woman who makes him a strange offer, she asks him to spend a few days in a small town called Steelville, in order to receive a heart in exchange. The reason? His son Charles.

Cora will understand over time that this place, this woman and this boy, hide a series of secrets that will lead her to face a mystery that she will try to solve, but which is spread over more than twenty years, since the day of her dead. arrival, with the disappearance of a baby in a public park.

“It all started a month before, just the first day of my medical residency at the hospital. I had been accepted into one of the largest programs in the country on a scholarship and was late for the introductory meeting with the dean, Dr. Mathews, where I was to be assigned to the first task force. I aspired to specialize in radiation oncology, a destination that reminded me of the burst of my mother’s tears. So I ran up the stairs. Arriving on the third floor felt like I was running the New York City Marathon, beating my personal best of three forty hours the year before. My heart was racing and I was coughing as I had almost gotten used to it for a few weeks” – (Fragment).

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With the agile prose that characterizes him, Castillo manages to take the reader of this book on board a train that only stops at the last station. The “The Crystal Cuckoo”, throughout 450 pages, is a story that seems to question the secrets behind the beating of a heart and how these secrets can affect, more or less, the lives of others. Ultimately, the novel itself seems to suggest, we’re all made of glass.

“What the thriller realizes is that no one wants to stop reading and that now, with the competition from social networks, it indicates that there is a high level,” said the Spanish author in an interview with the gate. 20 minutes, aware that he has been very lucky in recent years and the audience he has obtained with his work. Now with “The Crystal Cuckoo”which is the closing of the trilogy which started with “The Soul Game” and continued with “The Snow Maiden”he hopes that the reception will be just as wide (the first print run was estimated at 140,000 copies, just for Spain) and, why not, also have a screen adaptation.

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“I understand very well how reader interest works, because as a reader, I I see very clearly what I would or would not take away from the books I read”, emphasizes Castillo, who has sold more than 1,700,000 copies and is probably one of the most fruitful Spanish writers of recent years. , in terms of the numbers in his checkbook.

This book is perhaps the easiest to read among those that make up the trilogy, whose history is less dark and whose writing is more linear, based on two moments in time: the past and the present. Where one begins, the other ends. Addictive plot, as usual, and an intense need to ask questions from readers.

Javier Castillo He is a master of suspense and building plots that make the reader’s heart race through the incorporation of continuous twists. His talent and his closeness to a public in love with an authentic style make the name of the Spanish writer a synonym of success.

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