... the cult of Olokun, the most mysterious of the orishas, about whom even her most cooperative sources had kept quiet. According to the letter, black Cubans called a certain marine creature Olokun. It could travel back in time, dude, very Lovecraftian. [loc. 1248]
This short novel is set in three distinct time periods: the 2030s, when a trio of ecological disasters have rendered the ocean off Dominica a lifeless sludge, Chinese robots clear the streets of vagrants, and the president is advised by a santera, Esther Escudero, who is also the servant of the sea goddess Yemaya; the 1990s, when wealthy philanthropist Giorgio Menicucci hosts an artists' workshop and founds an institute of marine biology; and an indeterminate period in the 17th or 18th century, when buccaneers form a community on the coast of Hispaniola.
These three disparate periods are linked by Acilde Figueroa, who is introduced as Esther Escudero's housemaid. Acilde is a former sex worker plucked from the streets by Esther's factotum Eric, who perceives in this scrawny androgynous teenager a possible saviour. Transformed by the gender-reassignment drug RainbowBright, and simultaneously by an anemone rumoured to have mystical powers, Acilde (who has always identified as male) becomes a man in body -- and pronouns -- as well as in spirit, and is metaphorically 'reborn' in an underwater grotto in the 1990s.
In a parallel narrative, macho (and homophobic) artist Argenis is doomed to be a call-centre psychic until he quits his job (well, is sacked) and is taken up by the mysterious Giorgio Menicucci. After a diving accident, in which Argenis has a massive allergic reaction to anemone stings, he finds himself caught up in vivid dreams of buccaneers, art created with cows' blood, and hidden gold. Cut off from 'reality', Argenis can accept his own desires and urges.
There's a lot going on in Tentacle, yet it didn't capture me: I think this was because none of the characters felt quite real to me, or possibly just because I didn't or couldn't empathise with them. (I admit that the sex, violence and casual cruelties had a distancing effect, too.) There are such interesting ideas here -- gender and identity, cyberpunk interfacing with religion and black magic, the paradox of having access to 2030s information from the 1990s -- but I think I might have enjoyed the exploration of them more if the novel had been longer, with more description and character development. As it is, it felt short and snappy, like a fast-moving film or a graphic novel: fascinating, but not satisfying.
I read a review which indicated that the translation has transformed the text: I found the note on pronouns especially salient, as Acilde is misgendered until the RainbowBright / anemone incident:
The nature of the Spanish language makes it easier to omit pronouns, which Hernández often does when referring to Acilde. Obejas, on the other hand, is forced to choose feminine and masculine pronouns, respectively, before and after Acilde’s gender-reassignment.
Read for the 'By an LGBTQ+ Author' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.
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