Brais Lamela Explores Memory and Displacement in 'What Remains'
A debut novel examines how architecture and storytelling shape our understanding of the past.
1The Genesis of Displacement
Brais Lamela’s debut novel, What Remains, originated from his personal unsettlement regarding his native Galicia. He discovered that rural hamlets were forcibly cleared during the Franco dictatorship to build hydroelectric dams. These modernization projects fundamentally altered the landscape, turning natural environments into sites of state-imposed structural change and historical erasure.
2Archival Gaps and Fiction
The narrator, a PhD student, struggles to reconstruct the lives of displaced villagers using limited archival records. Finding these documents insufficient, he turns to fiction to imagine what history cannot recover. This transition highlights the inherent tension between bureaucratic, objective records and the subjective, emotional truths found in narrative storytelling.
3Architecture as Ideological Tool
Lamela emphasizes how Franco-era architects designed new settlements to impose specific ideologies on residents. By creating tiny, uniform kitchens instead of traditional communal spaces, the regime sought to discourage social gathering. This architectural manipulation demonstrates how physical environments are often designed to control the most intimate aspects of human life.
4Metafictional Narrative Techniques
The novel frequently breaks its own illusion to expose the machinery of storytelling. Characters like the narrator’s girlfriend, Mariana, challenge his version of events, forcing readers to question the reliability of the account. These interruptions serve to remind the audience that all historical narratives are shaped by the act of telling.
5The Mirror Effect Structure
Lamela structured the book in two distinct parts to create a dialogue between different worlds. The first section, set in New York, is abstract and groundless, reflecting the narrator’s immigrant experience. The second part returns to Galicia, grounding the narrative in a concrete, physical sense of place and familial history.
6Domesticity in Constant Flux
Living as an immigrant in New York, the author developed a textured understanding of domestic space. He views home not as a fixed entity, but as something constantly made and undone through the rituals of moving. This perspective informs the narrator’s relationship with his own living spaces throughout the novel.
7The Role of the Father
The narrator’s father, who suffers from a neurological disease, serves as a grounding figure in the second half. Unlike the narrator, who focuses on abstract thought, the father creates through physical labor. He works with discarded objects, mirroring the novel’s own poetics of finding value in what remains behind.
8Defining the Title's Meaning
The English title, What Remains, functions as both a desperate question and an affirmation of survival. While the original Galician title translates to No one remains, the novel is ultimately more interested in habitation than nostalgia. It seeks to grasp the enduring elements of a place even after it is flooded.
9Interrogating Personal Memory
Writing the novel forced Lamela to re-examine his childhood memories of abandoned houses and overgrown weeds in rural Galicia. By investigating these haunting presences, he connects his personal history to the broader, systemic processes of rural migration and dispossession that defined his region during the twentieth century’s mid-to-late political era.
10Galician Literary Context
Lamela highlights the richness of Galician literature, noting that poetry remains the region's national genre. He recommends authors like Berta Dávila for her hypnotic prose and Chus Pato for her avant-garde contributions. Additionally, he cites Susana Sánchez Arins as a vital voice for exploring the legacy of the Spanish Civil War.
11Books as Airy Vessels
The author describes his work as an airy vessel, a space designed to be open to multiple, often conflicting, voices. By avoiding over-determined mechanics, he invites readers to engage with the text as a dialogue. This approach allows the narrative to remain flexible, accommodating the uncertainties inherent in reconstructing the past.
12The Necessity of Trying
What Remains ultimately succeeds by highlighting the tension between the impossibility of fully restoring lost history and the necessity of the attempt. By making the limitations of the archive and the novelist visible, Lamela creates an affecting work that challenges how we perceive the relationship between our homes and our memories.