The stories of Enjambre (Swarm), Joaquín Areta's first novel, take place in a torrid, dry Neuquén, province of Argentina. Carlos, a retired engineer, takes care of his old mother; a boy from the suburbs, Bairon, waits alone, by the road, for cyclists to pass; Iñigo, a young agricultural engineer marked by his relationship with his father, must solve an invasion of aggressive bees. These stories are composed by matters that, only in appearance, are trivialities: a line of ants that persists in accompanying Carlos' elderly mother; a rectangle of black dirt at the bottom of his garden; Bairon's secret collection of stones and arrowheads; the monument in his neighborhood that commemorates the clash between the conquerors and the original inhabitants; the threatening presence of the police; the small "treasures" left behind by someone gone, which bring us echoes of the military dictatorship; the spines of the alpataco trees in the memory of Iñigo; a glass of juice filled with ice-cubes; the nauseating smell of an ambulance ... A swarm of images that orbits around bonding: between characters, between past and present, between territory and inhabitants. These stories together give shape to a particular Universe, in which the silence, the things that are not said and those which are simply implied, make the atmosphere more and more intriguing and unsettling until we’re also reached by its sting.

Joaquín Areta’s writing enables a new way of showing and saying that will imply, as well, a different way of reading and perceiving. This novel becomes intense and moving, taking on the brightness of what we cannot stop contemplating.