The President's Room

Paperback, 82 pages

Published April 27, 2020 by Charco Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-9997227-2-2

In a nameless suburb in an equally nameless country, every house has a room reserved for the president. No one knows when or why this came to be. It’s simply how things are, and no one seems to question it except for one young boy. The room is kept clean and tidy, nobody talks about it and nobody is allowed to use it. It is for the president and no one else. But what if he doesn’t come? And what if he does? As events unfold, the reader is kept in the dark about what’s really going on. So much so, in fact, that we begin to wonder if even the narrator can be trusted... Ricardo Romero has been compared to Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino, and we see why in this eerie, meditative novel narrated by a shy young boy who seems to be very good at lying about …

In a nameless suburb in an equally nameless country, every house has a room reserved for the president. No one knows when or why this came to be. It’s simply how things are, and no one seems to question it except for one young boy. The room is kept clean and tidy, nobody talks about it and nobody is allowed to use it. It is for the president and no one else. But what if he doesn’t come? And what if he does? As events unfold, the reader is kept in the dark about what’s really going on. So much so, in fact, that we begin to wonder if even the narrator can be trusted... Ricardo Romero has been compared to Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino, and we see why in this eerie, meditative novel narrated by a shy young boy who seems to be very good at lying about the truth. Following in the footsteps of Julio Cortázar and a certain literary tradition of sinister rooms (such as Dr Jekyll’s laboratory), The President’s Room is a mysterious tale based on the suspicion that a house is never just one single home.

1 edition

figbert reviewed The President's Room by Ricardo Romero

Engaging, Interesting, and Fun

4 stars

Content warning here be spoilers

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. An interesting commentary on – I think – the role of the state in the lives of its citizenry and moving away from a legacy of state violence.

I'm curious about the figure of the president in the novel. The president is clearly a powerful man, so much so that he has a room in every house. Yet, he is depicted in the text as a skulking figure, seen dashing in and out of the house in the dead of night, and never saying a word.

I'm also puzzled by the transformation of the narrator in the end of the book. The boy seems to become the president, adopting his mannerisms and living in his room. What does this mean, for the protagonist as well as the actual president? What does the boy becoming the president say about the forms of power in the novel?

One of my favorites so far in my excursion into the world of Latin American literature.

Adrián Astur Álvarez reviewed The President's Room by Ricardo Romero

Review of "The President's Room" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I love this little book. The pace it sets for the reader, with its sparse prose and gallery of pages filled with white space, is contemplative, haunting, and, eventually, oppressive.

I can say with certainty that living through the last 4 years in America I've reserved more than just a single room for the president so the metaphor built brick by brick in this novel wasn't such a leap. I think what impresses me most, though, is how Romero, as if by magic, creates an entire world of insight and metaphor with a light touch and the very clever mechanism of the fever dream and an unreliable narrator.

I hope there are plans to translate more of Romero into English!