Out in the Open

A Novel

By: Jesús Carrasco

Narrated by: W. Morgan Sheppard

Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

A searing dystopian vision of a young boy's flight through an unnamed, savaged country, searching for sanctuary and redemption - a debut novel from one of Europe's best-selling literary stars.

A young boy has fled his home. He's pursued by dangerous forces. What lies before him is an infinite, arid plain, one he must cross in order to escape those from whom he's fleeing. One night on the road, he meets an old goatherd, a man who lives simply but righteously, and from that moment on their paths intertwine.

Out in the Open tells the story of this journey through a drought-stricken country ruled by violence. A world where names and dates don't matter, where morals have drained away with the water. In this landscape the boy - not yet a lost cause - has the chance to choose hope and bravery or to live forever mired in the cycle of violence in which he was raised. Carrasco has masterfully created a high-stakes world, a dystopian tale of life and death, right and wrong, terror and salvation.

©2017 Jesús Carrasco (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"[B]leak and beautiful.... I found myself awake in the early morning hours reading about the trials of the characters in their merciless world...[Carrasco's] incredibly clean, crisp language (as translated by Margaret Jull Costa), and his precise, deliberate exclusions.” (New York Times Book Review)

"This novel’s deep theme is a peculiar kind of heroism - that of claiming, in a world stripped to necessity, a human remainder of grace: the choice to bear witness to ideals that are more precious than survival and that exist only in our affirmation of them. Out in the Open is a harrowing, humane, and very beautiful book." (Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You)

"Contemporary novels rarely engage so plainly with faith and physical suffering. Its characters are observant because to be unobservant, even for a moment, would be fatal.... [B]eautifully written, the ending will break your heart; but that’s not the point. This is a novel in which heartbreak doesn’t matter. Only survival does." (Los Angeles Review of Books)

Outside

`Out in the Open` is a Spanish novel from 2013. It reminds me of `The Road` but is better. To appreciate, one has to know about Spain's environmental problems with water. There are dry regions that once had villages and farms that have been abandoned to desert. This is due to water mismanagement by coastal resort cities, rivers dry up, vegetation dies. None of this is discussed in the novel, but anyone from Spain knows the unstated context. The setting is vaguely in the future after the rule of law has collapsed for an unknown reason. The writing is spare and action oriented with a sinister sense of being chased - at some point I became so attached to the main characters the danger they were in left me afraid to keep reading. Carrasco has that power, his writing is immersive and believable. Highly recommend.