“A masterpiece of literature about mourning.”

“This novel is the untamable chronology of a mother’s life. From the cold and madness to a universal story. Monge at his best, in a raw and beautiful journey to the nucleus of a woman.”

“Monge writes from the depths—he makes his worlds and his characters believable and knows what tricks to use to make his stories distill truth. He also knows the narrative resources he needs to make them stronger: he knows how to choose point of view and the type of voice that is most convenient, and how to ration information. He manages time expertly. […] a difficult and splendid work.”

“I’m certain that this is an irruption like no other when it comes to contemporary literature—that it will leave behind a well-marked before and after in Emiliano Monge’s career. And, come to think of it, not only for him, but in the way of writing of the generation of writers to come.”

“Author Emiliano Monge’s mother contains the world. To see the world through her eyes is to approach the Aleph, to understand good and evil, the enigmas of humanity and its pain, worries, violence, and savagery—but also its joy. [...] If mothers tend to say that thing about their children never calling them, Emiliano Monge’s has no reason to complain: her son has made her the absolute protagonist of one of the best books published this year, Justo antes del final. This book could easily pass as a work of fiction—that is the level of awe that some of these unexpected events provoke.” ”

“With Justo antes del final, Monge erects a spectacular monument that is ultimately funerary in honor of his mother, whom the narrator ‘interviews.’ [...] The dedication, consistency, and thoroughness with which the son listens to the woman are as admirable as her way of living that is so free and independent. [...] The novel is long, but the 432 pages don’t feel that way: on the contrary, they are instead read in suspense, with a growing sense of interest, in great part due to the stylistic choices.”

“‘What is literature?’ asks Monge, but an attempt to restore the order that has been lost—a dam against chaos. And what are we, humanity, but a log where dormant rays wait for their moment to light every forest, every city, every soul on fire?”

“A novel of mirrors and family memory, and also about a memory of the world that his mother had to live through. A novel, in brief, with which Monge solidifies his prominent place in literature.”

“Monge surprises us now with Justo antes del final, a careful and powerful chronological biography of his mother’s life that is, at the same time, a biography of universal history. Pain, madness, violence, willpower, and affection come together in this novel that some critics have already called a masterpiece.”

“Justo antes del final is Emiliano Monge’s novel that you wish would never end. His latest challenge. A maternal, sick, human, and therefore chaotic novel with which he is able to capture his country, his family, and himself.”

“This is the untamed chronology of the life of a mother and madness. Of Mexico and Latin America, and of our current world that is doomed to self-destruction. [...] a novel about family memory and the construction of memory surrounding a maternal figure, and a personal and collective past [...] Justo antes del final is a compendium of humanity with feminist and futurist brushstrokes that is submerged in madness.”

“This is a warm, direct, open novel, and its mystery—never minor—is the randomness of a lifetime and the willpower that propels it: forward-facing, as everything is resolved face-to-face (with the confrontations between characters and the “you” of the voice that is also before the reader’s eyes; horizontal, therefore). Above all, it is pleasant, dynamic, and endearing due to its list of characters; it appeals to empathy through its fair exposition of the emotions that run through it.
The author dared to show himself more—he went further in his self-portrayal, and I suspect also in his fiction (which is not a contradiction). The intensity of the writing doesn’t come from the brutality of damage this time, but rather from the inextricable pain of love, the disagreements of company, the need for compassion (both giving and receiving it), and from confronting the attachment we feel when the things we feel that attachment for end. His most recent novel is, I realize, a book that lets go.
The way the story is structured is easy to identify, to follow. Monge’s intention isn’t to present us with a difficult puzzle or a game of hide and seek, but rather he asks us to take a ride on the rollercoaster of time, with all of the speed changes and ups and downs that entails. From the very start, the cards are all on the table: each chapter narrates a year, starting with the mother’s birth in 1947 and ending with her death. The narrator interviews her, her siblings, his father, and he interrogates himself with the goal of drawing an ample family portrait.
The use of second person establishes a necessary distance between Emiliano the character and Emiliano the author. This, along with the use of the future tense, fills the writing with different tones and sounds. The singular privilege of that “you,” the only recipient of the story, along with the temporal subversion of knowing events that will not happen now but rather sometime in the future, make up a sum of fragilities: those that come with knowing what hasn’t happened yet and those that come with intimate discourse. The solidity of that narrative voice is the novel’s first virtue.
Through gossip, indiscretions, and shared memory, we learn about the story of a girl who was pushed aside by her mother from when she was very young, who needs to flee from the space of family in order to grow, mature, find herself: the life of a woman who wants to experience forms of liberty and winds up creating an environment she can bloom in (If I may use that verb), and make others bloom. A social family, a chosen ‘pack’ made out of comprehension, solidarity, and negotiations. Another one of the threads running through this book is the fight for everyday survival, the fight to detach and transplant oneself.
[...]
Justo antes del final is the book of an author who has quickly found his maturity and, in order to not shout out in celebration, opts to go down a path of reinvention (of the novel, of himself). An author who decides to, with wide open eyes, look at what is different, no matter if he’s always been too close to it or if that’s where we’re coming from—if we grew up under its shadow without realizing, blindly, until now.”

“This novel is neither an album nor an almanac. It is a Russian doll, and each layer or point of view mentioned above are precisely each one of the daughters that engender the following one, with the reader—who reads the novel and replicates the pattern—as the destination, the ultimate doll.”