The Darkness Within Us
Have you ever imagined how much your actions can affect someone’s life? That’s the question that will be hammering away in your head during and after reading “O Inominável”, the debut book and independent production written by young writer Gustavo Lopes. At 28 years old, in the midst of work, study, and hundreds of other things, this São Paulo native decided to embark on his true passion, writing: giving voices to stories that don’t always have a happy ending, but must be told.
In this first production, the one who takes on the role of spokesperson for the facts is Thalita, who introduces us to her 3 best friends: Augusto, Davi and Andreia. This group of high school students had their lives drastically changed after finding an unknown book in the school library.
The cover was sinister, grayish, leaning towards black, and had a different texture, like the feathers of a black bird. In the center of it was the skeleton of a bird, probably a crow, embedded. It looked like the real thing, I mean, the skeleton. It had the texture of bone, the smell of bone” (LOPES, 2017, Chapter 1 – s.n.).
The object, although strange, has nothing written on its thin pages. Even so, Augusto decides to keep it, which leads the others to believe that it is nothing more than a joke by his friend – since he had already tried to convince them to play an RPG together. As the story progresses, we begin to wish that it was just a joke.
Victims of bullying, the characters end up finding a possible solution to their problems – instructions for a seemingly harmless ritual, which appears in the pages of the book. This motivates them to embark on a search for a definitive end to the suffering they face at school. What they did not imagine is that they would be guided by hatred and blinded by the resentment of all those who hurt them, making them sink into endless darkness.
Many stories have addressed the issue of bullying, placing greater emphasis on the suffering of those who experience it. However, the author of The Unnameable manages to guide our thoughts to this subject, without using a “moralizing” tone to indicate that this is what he expects. He presents us with the reasons for the characters’ hatred and the situations each one has suffered, but we are left to understand the metaphors used by ourselves. For example, how the darkness in which they find themselves takes hold of them, inciting them to harm those they hate without thinking about the consequences.
“O Inominável” is a short book, with eight chapters of a story, told in the first person, that can keep you hooked from beginning to end. The work makes us think about each act that has caused us suffering and our actions that have affected someone. When we finish reading, we are left with a mix of feelings which oscillate between the understanding that what the characters went through motivated them to act in a certain way, and the doubt as to whether or not we would do the same in their situation. Perhaps we all have a darkness inside us, just waiting to be released.
Additional information
“O Inominável” is available on Wattpad and Luvbook, with a total of 2.5k reads. This is the debut book by author Gustavo Lopes, but the São Paulo native also has a blog (Blog do Gusta), where we can find another short story by him, called “A coroa”, as well as several texts on other themes.
- This post was originally posted on the website Travessia Cult in 2017. You may check the original post clicking here.
