Who would have thought that the name of a Pink Floyd album that the group didn’t know what to call would bring us here today. The musicians had finished recording and, unable to think of a title for it, followed their producer’s advice: they looked through the daily press until they came up with an idea. They found the story of a woman with a pacemaker powered by a radioactive isotope. The woman had become pregnant and so became a “mother with an atomic heart” which served to name the opening track and the album like this: Atom Heart Mother. And that is the name that this unique writer, Agustín Fernández Mallo, borrows for his new book, much more than an incredible journey through the life of his deceased father.
Fernández Mallo did not exactly look into the press of the day for inspiration, but rather into the story of that father — a curious veterinarian and researcher who traveled to the United States in the sixties in search of new cows for the Spanish farm — and into his own vision spread across the videos he records, the photos he handles, the notes he collects, the countries he visits, and the story of an illness and a death that lead him to illuminate an anonymous life that turns out to be universal.
Reaching her figure through that of the father and vice versa is undoubtedly the vital gift that writing has given to Fernández Mallo.
Mother of atomic heart, Fernández Mallo’s story thus becomes, from the beginning to the last words, a literary immersion that thrills from tranquility and that weaves a common thread from a father who is a scientist, conscientious, curious, hard-working and guided by the search for knowledge, to a son who – despite his logical independence, his distancing and his individualization from his father – shows that he has inherited that same desire for wisdom. The son that is Fernández Mallo (La Coruña, 1967) goes through the memories of that life, of his death and of his relationship and he does so without haste, with a firm step and with the precise rhythm to give it meaning on many levels: mathematical, rhythmic, literary, random and also full of logical suggestions from the illogic that can be contained in thought and dreams. Nothing is superfluous and nothing is missing in the story.
The author of Nocilla Project, of poetry collections, essays, music and very varied projects, he has a degree in Physics and that dimension permeates a rich, cultured, curious way of narrating, which aspires at all times to understand what happened before serving it to us on a silver platter. Mother of atomic heart It is a short and calm book, without drama, without anxiety, which addresses the mental deterioration of a father who was once full of knowledge and does so without embellishment, with the necessary sobriety and respect, with no more epic than the deepening of life itself, as if that were not enough. The life of the father, of himself and of the one who triangulates the story, which is his mother.
To reach her figure through that of the father and vice versa is without a doubt the vital gift that writing has given to Fernández Mallo. And the literary gift that he gives to us, his readers. Perhaps Pink Floyd improvised its title while leafing through the press. In the hands of this author, the depth of charge that he achieves in a true mother with an atomic heart, his own, is anything but improvisation. A great little book.
Wikipedia tells us that the song and the album in question were going to be called The Amazing Pudding And knowing this after reading the book can be disconcerting. Who knows what would have happened then? But Mallo’s readers, for now, can say: thank you, Pink Floyd.
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