Strawberry fields (Sierra i Fabra)

Within youth literature, Strawberry fields is one of the best-selling books of Jordi Sierra i Fabra, Barcelona writer. After writing and publishing various biographies of musicians and texts related to the history of musical genres, Jordi specialized in narrative for young people. His characters are usually teenagers in various situations facing issues ranging from rebellion to eating disorders and drug use.

In this lesson from a TEACHER we will do a summary of Strawberry fields, a novel that he wrote between May and June 1996 on a trip he made to Isla Margarita in Venezuela and in Vallirana. Its publication occurred in 1997.

We started this summary of Strawberry fields talking about the plot of the novel.

A call at dawn woke up Luis and Esther Salas, the voice of a nurse rushed them with devastating news: her daughter is in the hospital in a coma.

Through a simple vocabulary and short chapters, Jordi Sierra i Fabra takes us into his plot: Luciana, an 18-year-old she first consumed what was apparently a

ecstasy pill and a heat stroke left her in a hospital bed. From here we know the characters and the implications of consumption.

Before Luis and Esther arrive at the emergency room, Cintia, Santi and Máximo wait in the waiting room. They are Luciana's friends and the three of them wonder the same thing, "Why hasn't anything happened to me?" The night before they had been partying at the Pandora's disco along with other friends, Ana, Paco and Raúl. Each one had consumed that pill with a crescent tattoo in the center, but Luciana "felt bad." Now she was unconscious and, under the diagnosis of Dr. Juan Pons, the situation did not look very good. The boys were tricked and what they would have been sold as ecstasy was actually eva, another type of substance.

When she arrived at the hospital, Luciana's parents, who were accompanied by Norma, her younger sister, they found out about the whole situation. After that they only had to wait. But Santi, Cintia and Máximo decided to tell what happened to Eloy, Luciana's boyfriend, and Loreto, one of her best friends. Eloy arrived almost immediately with the discouraging news that the only hope left to save his girlfriend was to get one of the pills and discover its composition. For her part, Loreto could not go out, he suffered from bulimia and was in such a state of physical deterioration that she could not accompany her friend.

From this point we see what do people experience and feel that are close to the protagonist. We discovered that Luciana was one of the best students in her class, with an outstanding talent for chess.

The other side of consumption

With this general context that the author presents us, we meet other characters. On the one hand, there is the inspector Vicente Espinós, who sets out in search of Poli, the drug dealer who has sold drugs to the boys and works for a certain Castro. On the other hand, there is Mario Zapata, a yellow journalist who looks for any opportunity to put Luciana's story on the front page.

In parallel, Eloy acts as a detective and, like Vicente Espinós, brings us closer to the street and the lowest corners of the universe of Strawberry fields. They enter the scenarios of pensions and mousetraps where drug producers hide. So to speak, these characters take us into the life of the other side of consumption: its distributors.

Every certain number of chapters we find one that is dedicated exclusively to the Luciana's thoughts who, despite being in a coma, can see what is happening around him. As she says herself while she talks to Norma without her being able to hear her:

“It is a strange feeling, sister. It is as if it floats nowhere, rather, it is as if my body is out of all sensation, because I do not feel anything, neither cold nor heat, nor do I feel pain ”.

A game with counted chips

The only place the novel explores death is not in the emergency room. Jordi Sierra i Fabra also shows us the fine line of the addictions in bulimia who lives daily Loreto. There are even chapters dedicated exclusively to how she copes with her eating disorder and tries to overcome it while one of her best friends is hospitalized.

As a great metaphor for the book, Luciana mentions in one of her thoughts that she feels that she is risking everything to live. Therefore, it is not surprising that the author has decided to title each chapter as the movement of a piece on a chessboard. This in order to create the image that Luciana was waging a battle with death in her favorite game and in which she was a champion:

“I have to move. Time passes and the game is in a draw. But he has to move me. My rival has just launched an attack on the positions of my king and my queen. It is a compromising situation. I must do it. I can sacrifice a rook to escape, or carefully ponder my own attack, throwing the knight on its bishop. And that pawn? Careful. My rival is good. He is the best I have ever had.

Because now I know what he is like.

I know who he is.

I've seen his face.

My rival is death, and he plays to win. "

Before finishing the book, Eloy meets at a party Poli, the camel that sold them the pills, and a chase begins. However, an unforeseen event makes the story turn completely. Poli falls to the ground hitting the back of his neck and spreading the pills in the rain. The camel dies and when Eloy arrives on the scene the pills have already been washed away.

Having obtained a photo of Luciana in a coma and persuaded Norma to write up information about the incident, Mario Zapata decides to publish the article. And although all seems lost, Loreto makes the firm decision to treat and overcome her bulimia, while Luciana continues to fight to live. With a strong will he wants to move that last piece that will make him win the game.

And we find the last chapter of the book entitled "White wins game, Black loses game". Luciana opens her eyes. He is alive and conscious.

While in this summary of Strawberry fields We have mentioned the characters in the story, it is worth making a brief list. Within the main characters we found the Group of friends:

• Luciana
• Eloy
• Loreto
• Headband
• Santi
• Maximum

With a little less prominence, but just as relevant in the story, there would be the Luciana's family, the doctor, the detective and the journalist:

• Luis, Ester and Norma
• Juan Pons
• Vicente Espinós
• Mario Zapata

In the last plane we find the acquaintances of the protagonists, as well as the camel and his boss:

• Ana, Paco and Raúl
• Policarpo (Poli) and Castro

Surely a fan of the Beatles It will not take more than two seconds to realize that the title of the work is related to the famous song Strawberry Fields Forever, composed by John Lennon in 1967. And that, according to some interpretations, refers to the altered states of consciousness that hallucinogens produce.

With the rise of synthetic drugs like LSD, ecstasy, and different opioids, the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s left a base generational that resulted in hippie movements, a sexual revolution and an illegal production industry of drugs. Jordi Sierra i Fabra brings us there, a generation of young people in the late 20th century who have easy access to psychoactive substances on dance floors and late-night parties.

His story is framed by youth culture that, as Sandra Gutiérrez indicates in her text Through Strawberry Fields, hides "the unbridled desire to dance, to enjoy weekends away from homework and family conversations that are often tedious for some adolescents."

At the narrative level, Jordi Sierra i Fabra makes use of various resources in his novels such as Interior monologue (we can read what a character thinks), the flash back (takes us back to moments before the events that happen in the "present" tense in the novel) and the use of a omniscient narrator (which from an external point of view to that of the characters tells us what happens to them). In the case of the novel that we have summarized in this article, the author puts two of them into practice:

1. A omniscient narratorthat is telling us how the events unfold.
2. Chapters written in their entirety in the first person that express the Interior monologue of the protagonist: her wishes, fears, thoughts of her, etc.