Gonzalo C. Garcia - At twenty-seven, single again after a brief shared life of haute cuisine and cushions, Tomás is in a weird in-between state where he doesn't know the rules, worries about how boring he is and that he's at an age where people start to dress like their parents. He continually gets himself tangled in lies, and caught up in unfortunate situations because he wants to avoid an uncomfortable conversation or he's putting things off.

Gonzalo C. Garcia, We Are The End, Galley Beggar Press, 2017.


Read the first chapter here.
excerpt


Tomás' girlfriend has left him. She has, in fact, fled to Antarctica, leaving him alone in Santiago, where life is rapidly passing him by.
Tomás is a game designer – but he can't see his ideas through.
Tomás also works in a university – where he spends most of his time hiding under a desk.
Tomás’ flat is falling apart. The band he used to play in is doing annoyingly well. He drinks coffee though a straw straight from the pot because he can't find a clean cup...
We Are The End is the smart and funny debut from Gonzalo C. Garcia. It’s a novel which gives a new voice to the Millennial Generation – exploring the difficulties of finding your place in the world, and having to navigate it, too, with few guides beyond computer game narratives and the useless advice of the older generation...
With its Chilean setting, fresh themes and perspectives – and its willingness to play with form – We Are The End is unique. But it is also universal. Tomás' loss and longing resonate deeply, as do his jokes. There is something of Tomás in all of us – even if he’s someone who ends up sleeping in a tent in his own living room...






I was nervous about this book. The main character sounded like someone I could relate to and the Chilean setting intrigued me, but it's positioned as a millennial zeitgeist novel with gamer appeal, and I'm pushing forty with pop-cultural references that fade out in the late nineties. I needn't have worried: even I recognise Tetris and Super Mario, and with more mentions of Metallica than Facebook it's easy to forget the era and concentrate on the universal themes of love and stupidity.
We Are The End is Gonzalo C Garcia's first novel and was published as a paperback in October 2017 by Galley Beggar Press.
Set in Santiago, Chile this is a dark comedy about love, loss, and game design. Tomás is a failing game designer, a part-time university lecturer who hides under the desk whenever he's in the office, a man whose girlfriend has not only left him but gone to Antarctica. Alone in Santiago he sits in his disintegrating flat, drinking coffee from a cafetiere with a straw because he has no cups, and watching the band he's no longer in become annoyingly successful. "There is something of Tomás in all of us" the press release says, possibly as a cautionary tale, but it is true that We Are The End is both unique and universal.
Gonzalo C Garcia is originally from Chile though he has lived in the UK for more than a decade and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Warwick. His Chilean background, membership of an interdisciplinary research group on video games, and experience of sleeping under a chewing-gum covered desk in his office have all fed into We Are The End. He was an invited author at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2017.
There is no getting away from the fact that Tomás is hopeless, one of those characters that make you groan and want to save them from themselves. Herein lies the novel's strength, taking the reader so deeply into his thoughts and repetitive dreams that Tomás becomes real and important. By the time he ends up sleeping in a tent in his own living room, that seems like perfectly reasonable Tomás behaviour. Similarly, the way so many sentences trail off into ellipses fits with Tomás, his tiredness, his desire to avoid certain thoughts, and his inability to follow through on pretty much anything, so it stops being unusual pretty quickly.
The twin obsessions in his life are his ex-girlfriend, Eva, and the elusive game, the big one that will change his life. The two are, naturally, entangled in his mind and the chapters are peppered with pages from his Ideas book, complete with crossings out and occasional sketches. The theory is that if only he wrote the perfect game if only he knew exactly the right words to say to Eva, everything would change for the better. But while Tomás is living in his imaginary future, life is passing him by and the everyday necessities like preparing for lectures or marking his students' coursework get overlooked.
At twenty-seven, single again after a brief shared life of haute cuisine and cushions, Tomás is in a weird in-between state where he doesn't know the rules, worries about how boring he is and that he's at an age where people start to dress like their parents. He continually gets himself tangled in lies, and caught up in unfortunate situations because he wants to avoid an uncomfortable conversation or he's putting things off. Much of the humour in the book stems from that, and his general awkwardness. For instance, in one scene at the university, wanting to make a grand gesture he grabs his colleague's umbrella and tries to rip it apart. "It is, however, way harder than he thought it'd be and he keeps pulling but nothing comes off… a minute passes by in silence with Tomás trying to break an umbrella."
As both a portrait of the young and feckless of Santiago and the absurdities of love, this novel works brilliantly. The rainy city itself, or Tomás's view of it, is used to great effect as more than just a backdrop, and it's here where Garcia's most lyrical writing comes through: "they try to spot the stars but it's all fog and even the largest cities can disappear behind passing clouds but that's fine… They look up to Santiago, to its blurred streets, to the invisible corners they know will reappear tomorrow all changed and new, and they wish the river would for once just stop."
We Are The End will appeal to anyone who is or can remember being young and introspective, with life's potential around the corner if only you knew how to make the most of it. A passing familiarity with video games, heavy metal and universities will add an extra layer but it shouldn't spoil your enjoyment if you have barely encountered any of them before.
This is a fantastic, funny, dreamy, quirky, and sometimes surreal novel, and Tomás is an endearing loser. He and his city will stay with you well past the last page. - Jacqueline Saville​
http://www.disclaimermag.com/other-stuff/love-loss-and-game-design-in-santiago-5561




We Are the End, Gonzalo C. Garcia’s debut novel, arrives with a measure of expectation, published as it is by Galley Beggar, a small press whose keen eye for overlooked, unorthodox writers and use of handsome uniform covers (a strategy currently in vogue, with Pushkin Press, Pereine Press and Fitzcarraldo Editions all doing something similar) have helped them carve out a solid indie standing, aided by Eimear McBride’s award-strewn 2013 novel A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.
We Are the End follows Tomás, a computer game designer in Santiago experiencing what amounts to writer’s block. ‘He’s been trying to come up with a story for months now and he lied to Jaime [his colleague] about his progress. He told him “it was coming”, IT, because after all, that’s what it takes. One idea, one moment, and it will come, it must.’
But this block is merely a symptom of a grander malaise. Tomás is in the drear throes of toska. The story opens on him cutting a faintly Beckettian figure, alone in his chaotic flat at 4:17am, using a straw to drink coffee directly from a cafetière because he owns no cups and sees nothing to be gained from buying some. We learn that he loathes his job, that a band he quit are on the verge of breaking through, that his apartment is literally falling apart around him and other sundry indicators of his mental state: ‘Getting up, taking a shower, dressing up, drying and waxing his hair, cleaning his glasses and shaving… He finds it hard to want to do any of it.’ The text is punctuated with the cryptic scribblings in Tomás’s ‘IDEAS book’, plans for outlandish, nonsensical games which no sane person would ever want to play. Worst of all – indeed the fount of Tomás’s woe – is Eva, his ex-girlfriend who has left him for Antarctica, preferring its icy and unpeopled badlands to his dowdy company.
Indie bands, internationalism, computer games, coffee, unrequited love. If We Are the End is beginning to sound like it’s got MILLENNIAL plastered all over it, that’s because it has. But this isn’t so much the bittersweet coming-of-age tale the above precis might imply. What Garcia offers is instead an unwaveringly bleak satire on Generation Y, capturing the slow souring of that age as its unstoppable idealism comes up against the unbudgeable drudgery that is adulthood.
The novel has much in its favour, not least a canniness in regards to the expectations such stories set up. On the surface, We Are the End is cut from the same cloth as blokey romcoms like Wayne’s World, Shaun of the Dead and much of Woody Allen’s output, where a humdrum loser wins back his wayward soulmate through sheer bull-headed perseverance. Here, Tomás decides to travel to the Antarctic and reclaim Eva as his. The players are all present – the slacker best friend, the wise old man, the gaggle of friendly misfits who pool their eccentricities to help the protagonist to get his way, the belligerent ex – but all is upended: his best friend turns out to be more successful than him, both professionally and romantically, the misfits are simply alienated by Tomás, the wise old man is just ‘fucking with you’, and Eva, the ex, is content to remain just that. Nonetheless Tomás’s trust in the cast-iron power of narrative, specifically ‘the use of the “Damsel in Distress” tropes’, remains steadfast.
A positive too is how refreshing it is to see a relatable depiction of the world of tech development. Most of our knowledge of the industry comes from its totemic, faintly alien figures – Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, et al. – and the cosmic influence and vast sums at their beck. Here things are more recognisably squalid, with Tomás having no idea what he’s doing and for whom coding is as elusive as it is to the lay reader. His success, such as it is, rests on a single, mangled game: ‘It was about an elephant called Bimbo, and he defied the laws of gravity, because when he jumped to collect coins he never dropped back down, and all you were left with was an empty screen with moving platforms. Disney bought it in the end, and rehashed it as a cheap mobile game about Dumbo, the flying elephant, and they were both allowed to keep their jobs.’
As this suggests, Garcia is a funny writer. At one point, he discovers co-worker Jaime had ‘been listening to Phil Collins who Tomás thinks is the opposite of anything respectable because he wears gloves to drum and can’t even sing… and he’s overweight, has no hair and his name is Phil Collins.’ Tomás’s interior excursions such as this proliferate, but his funniness grows problematic, nigglingly so at first but in a way which becomes harder to ignore as the book continues.
The issue itself is exemplified about a third of the way through the novel when Tomás’s father unexpectedly dies. This brings him into contact with his family, including his onetime normal sister who has converted to fundamentalist hippiedom and arrives at the funeral with an entourage of crusty bums and topknot jugglers. This allows for some acid observations and a few pages of ersatz profundity, but the reason why it’s possible for me to reveal the demise of the protagonist’s father without it being a spoiler is that it has no aftereffects. Other than a jokey funeral set-piece, Tomás’s father’s passing is literally of no consequence: grief remains absent, the plot is unaffected, Tomás returns to his apartment.
More significantly, Garcia’s distinguishing humour – half contemptuous, half oddball – all of which is channelled through Tomás’s POV, is effective in nudging the reader into siding with the protagonist. But this begins to impart a kind of queasiness when viewed alongside his actions, many of which, while not being unconscionable, are at least fairly objectionable – Tomás abandons his students mid-lecture to go for a lie down, he lies to his colleagues about working on a non-existent game, he’s routinely dismissive to all female characters he encounters – and which don’t appear to provoke him into learning anything in the way of a lesson. To the final page Tomás remain unchanged and unpleasant, which at times makes finding the 300-plus which precede it lolsome a fairly big ask for a reader.
But is this a big deal? Ultimately what makes We Are the End successful yet not quite able to meet its potential is an issue not with its comedy but sadly with the wider social landscape. This is most telling when Tomás is beset by crowds of protestors, something which occurs periodically throughout the book. Their ire is omnivorous – education, global warming, capitalism – and to our hero they’re simply a nuisance, rendered in fairly broad, stereotyping terms: ‘They’re all wearing hiking boots, green jungle hats with nets on the back of the neck, and oversized military jackets filled with pins and badges and creases and holes… students dressed up as zombies carrying anti-government and free education banners. This one fat zombie sharing a metal pole with him isn’t wearing a shirt and has painted his belly white and patched with scars and patched with black scars. He doesn’t need the paint to scare anyone with that belly.’
All humorous enough, but the impression left is of a joke which might have fared better in more cosseted, bygone days, when protest was altogether less necessary than it now feels.
Likewise, a tale which is essentially an extended delineation of an affluent man’s neuroses, leaving in its wake a trail of spent women, seems perhaps a tad less amusing a prospect today than when it was first conceived. - Richard V. Hirst
https://www.litro.co.uk/2018/09/book-review-end-gonzalo-c-garcia/


We Are The End, by Gonzalo C. Garcia, is a book from one of my favourite publishers and therefore a story I wanted to enjoy. Unfortunately I did not. My negative reaction led me to consider not posting this review but I try to be honest with my readers. The structure of the tale may have been intended as edgy, contemporary, experimental. I felt it lacked depth and coherency.
The protagonist is Tomás, a twenty-seven year old computer games designer living in Santiago who teaches at the local university one day a week. Tomás fits the often unjust cliché of the media derided millenial. He is self-absorbed and impractical, seeking validation without effort. Although desperate to reconnect with his ex-girlfriend, Eva, his attitude towards her is one of ownership and a desire for sex.
Tomás has recently moved into a new flat but has yet to put together a bed frame, sleeping instead on the floor or a couch. Eva took many of their possessions when she left so he drinks his coffee from the jug it is brewed in and eats his take-away meals from paper plates. His inability to move on with his life appears to preclude him from replacing what most would regard as essentials. He may not be rich but, from his other spending, could afford such basics.

Tomás is obsessed by Eva, refusing to accept their relationship is finished, something she has made clear. He drifts through his days achieving little, including the work required by his employers. When he manages to sleep he has vivid dreams. Between his wakeful and sleeping fantasies it can be a challenge at times to understand what is real.
A mutual friend informs Tomás that Eva, a marine biologist, has gone to work in Antarctica. Tomás decides that he will follow her, thereby proving his devotion and impressing her with his ability to be spontaneous. His planning is ludicrous but he does not appear to see this. If the ridiculousness of his purchases offers an attempt at humour it lacks urbanity.
Following a liason with a student, Tomás befriends a group of young people who work at a pawn shop. He attends events where he feels older than most, his concern at aging a recurrent theme. He is mocked for the way he chooses to dress and his general behaviour.

The writing is divided into sections narrating Tomás’s day to day activities, curated memories, ideas for computer games, and his dreams. The continuity can be somewhat fluid in places. His relationships with family and friends appear shallow and deceitful – his personal view of himself requiring that everyone see him in a more positive light than is deserved. His need to isolate himself from reality adds to the loneliness he will not own. His life has stalled.
I suspect that readers are meant to find many of the recurring themes depicted humorous, there is an element of burlesque. Tomás’s sexual fantasies culminate in a disturbing idea for a computer game that I found grotesque.
Tomás is envious of friends’ success, especially their depiction in memes. There is further irony such as a self proclaimed satanist named Jesús, and the absurdity of many situations Tomás finds himself in. He has a preoccupation with used chewing gum stuck under a desk. He considers himself busy yet does little with his days.

Water is referred to in many ways: the polluted river; a bath filled with booze that he climbs into fully dressed; the rainy weather and his lack of coat; a hole dripping water from his flat’s ceiling; his dreams of Eva and a house by the sea. Any joined up significance remains a mystery.
The roles of the protesters, party goers and various retailers add colour but little of substance. Tomás is depicted as impractical and oblivious; there are shades of parody, attempts at panache, but they fall short in conviction.
The book is a little over three hundred pages long. After one hundred pages an event was related which renewed my flagging interest. It was not retained. At just beyond two hundred pages there occured another event which was enough to propel me towards the end. That I was noticing such progress, willing myself to continue, demonstrates my lack of engagement.

I have the greatest respect for this small publisher’s ability to discover quality fiction. I will be interested in how other readers take to this tale with its often puerile representations. It was not for me. - Jackie Law
https://neverimitate.wordpress.com/2017/10/13/book-review-we-are-the-end/

Galley Beggar Press is promoting We Are the End, a debut novel written in English by the Chilean-born Gonzalo C. Garcia, as a voice of the millennial generation. In this case, the label seems to denote self-absorption, apathy, vain creative ambition and housing problems, amplified until they feel emblematic, and expressed in an internet-circa-2010 prose style littered with emphatic capitalizations and struck-through text.

The novel follows a short spell in the life of Tomás, a writer and teacher of video-game narratives who lives in Santiago. Tomás’s life is falling apart: his girlfriend has dumped him and taken off for the Antarctic; he can’t sleep or work; and his flat is dire even by the standards of generation rent: the ceiling has caved in and Tomás sleeps in a tent.
With Tomás blocked in both his writing and his life, the novel explores the functions of narrative and agency. His inaction… - ELLIE ROBINS
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/game-over/

GONZALO C. GARCIA was born in Chile and spent his first years in the small town of San Fernando in Chile’s Colchagua Valley region, before moving to Switzerland and eventually to the University of Kent, where he studied for a PHD. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Warwick.