Alonso Cueto's The Blue Hour: War, Marriage & Peru's Rifts
Interpreting Alonso Cueto's "The Blue Hour"
A definition often proposed for a "great novel" or "important narrative" applies to works allowing different levels of reading or multiple approaches—nearly as many interpretations as there are readers. This is precisely the case with The Blue Hour, the Herralde Prize-winning novel by Alonso Cueto.
Layers of Meaning: War, Thriller, and Social Critique
For example, one could align it with Santiago Roncagliolo's Abril Rojo within a barely explored vein of literature concerning the civil war Peru fought against the Shining Path insurgency. It also incorporates elements of police investigation and suspense thriller, handled with well-managed realism and pacing.
Peru's Enduring Divisions: A Nation Fractured
However, despite the above, The Blue Hour does not provide—nor claim to—explicit clarification on the reasons behind Peru's Andean civil war. Or, perhaps it contributes implicitly by showing that Peru is not a homogeneous or compact nation, but rather a world marked by profoundly insurmountable distances. These include divisions between:
- The capital city versus the rest of the country
- The coast versus the mountains
- Lima's elites versus the Andean poor
Marriage: The Bleak Heart of Bourgeois Society
Instead, and perhaps unintentionally (as it's shown more than emphasized, except for a devastating critical assessment at the end), Cueto presents a bleak picture of one pillar of bourgeois society: marriage.
The Ultra-Right Triad vs. Revolutionary Ideals
Before elaborating on this, it is pertinent to recall that a slogan of the militant, fundamentalist ultra-right proposes the triad "God, Country, and Family" as its main ideological referent. This slogan reveals its true profile when juxtaposed against the triad originating from the French Revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." Returning to the ultra-right theme, we know that God remains, at best, a hypothesis. As for the Fatherland, Cueto, history, and collective memory remind us: Peru had its civil war, and with or without it, we live with our inherent division (Arguedas dixit) between the "foxes from above" and the "foxes from below." And regarding the family, its cornerstone is marriage.
It is regarding marriage that Cueto's novel paints a picture as real as it is pessimistic.
Marriage as Inertia: Examples from the Novel
Consider the following examples from the novel:
Commander Ormache's Brief Union
The marriage of the first Ormache, the Navy commander who held command in Ayacucho, lasted just two years. In other words, marriage and immediate retreat (without even waiting for the seven-year itch).
Chacho's Violent Relationship
The marriage of the character Chacho is described (p. 70) as a relationship based on fighting "all day. I hit him too, sometimes have to give him hard to understand, the woman is a beast."
Adrián Ormache: Marriage as Facade
The marriage of the protagonist, Adrián Ormache, a successful attorney, is nothing but a hollow shell. Cueto's novel notes that being married—even with infidelity ("sheets outside")—is necessary for the respectable presentation of a prominent lawyer. Indeed, contrary to what he lives or feels for his wife Claudia ("they even made love, with pleasure, from time to time", p. 239), the two most fully human or empathetic relationships Adrián Ormache maintains are with his secretary Jenny (a companionate relationship) and his lover Miriam (an erotic relationship).
Cueto's Diagnosis: Love, Resignation, and Tragedy
In the author's words (p. 297), we see this diagnosis of what constitutes the third pillar of the idealized bourgeois structure—the family, or marriage: "...we have a family and we have a couple who have been given by a random act of the will, the fact that once a crowd of people heard us say 'yes' in a church. And our tragedy (Note: Cueto uses 'tragedy' or 'drama,' not 'problem') is not necessarily that we have stopped loving that person, but the bitterness underlying a love maintained without understanding, with the resignation of habitual passion."
More briefly put, marriage becomes pure and simple inertia.
Conclusion: The Bourgeoisie's Silent Civil War
Although the army, the bourgeoisie, and the state won the civil war against the Shining Path, Alonso Cueto's The Blue Hour suggests that the bourgeoisie itself remains locked in another silent, multifaceted civil war: the one playing out in most marital relationships. More precisely, The Blue Hour does not merely present the consequences of the civil war twenty years later. While not its only central theme, the novel offers a realistic diagnosis of the double bind—social and familial—reminding us that the family is supposedly the true and main fabric of any society.