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🇬🇷 Greece /Culture & Society

Beware the Hole

From Kathimerini · () Greek

Translated from Greek and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Opinion Named sources Context piece
  • Victor Pseftakis’s second novel, “Whatever Makes You Forget,” follows migrants and other outsiders living in a ruined seaside town dominated by a landfill, an abandoned mine and a mysterious Hole.
  • The Hole promises relief but draws people to their deaths, while creatures born from its depths carry the memories of those who disappeared.
  • The novel combines grief, migration, political fiction, crime, queer romance and existential horror, using humor, sensory memory and fantastical allegory to explore mourning and loss.

On a hill above a ruined seaside town, a landfill rises beside an abandoned mine. The city is humid, foul-smelling and miserable. Its residents arrived from other countries, washed onto its shores by desperation. Without papers or citizenship, they now ruin their lives in the tunnels of a new mine, extracting an ore used to make a drug that helps them forget.

The call, the oblivion, the relief, the helplessness to make any other decision in my life except this one.

· Aris, a character in the novelAris describes the fatal pull of the Hole after seeing it.

Their only hope is the Hole opening on the hill. Many call it a wishing hole and promise it everything under the stars. Yet the only wish it grants is death. Anyone who looks into its depths disappears, pulled down by the attraction of the void. In his second novel, “Whatever Makes You Forget,” Victor Pseftakis, born in Kavala in 1984, builds an elaborate fantasy around that dark premise.

The Hole reflects the inhabitants’ attraction to death. Even Aris, one of the book’s most positive and resilient characters, feels its call when he first sees it: “The call, the oblivion, the relief, the helplessness to make any other decision in my life except this one.” Another passage explains the force it exerts: “That’s how they fall in, then. They say nothing can stop them. They say the Hole enters through their eyes, settles in their hearts and devours them.” The Hole pulses and swells, luring those who approach with a soft murmur and drawing suicidal violence from deep within them.

That’s how they fall in, then. They say nothing can stop them. They say the Hole enters through their eyes, settles in their hearts and devours them.

· Narrator or character in Victor Pseftakis’s novelThe passage describes how the Hole overwhelms people and drives them toward death.

Whenever someone falls into the Hole, a creature is born from its depths. These hybrid beings come from some beyond and carry the memories of the people who vanished. They include Lucia the Lamp, which blinks when anxious; the activist golden Malamatenia; the Lord of Dead Ends, a master of futility; Spongey the Brilliant; Dionysis the Poet, a kind-hearted drug dealer; and the bloodthirsty Suzy Q. Their strangeness and humor keep the story from sinking entirely into darkness, with the irony reaching its peak when the fantasy acquires a waffle maker.

frothing like burnt milk, singing her grandmother’s lullaby

· Narrator describing Marta’s visionThe image links the Hole to Marta’s memories and the sensory experience of grief.

Pseftakis handles memory as both consolation and pain. In the novel, memories flourish through smells, from tobacco and a father’s cigarette pouch to a grandmother’s lullaby and the scent of a knitted cardigan. The trans Alice, once Miro’s lover, sings at the Ameriken cabaret, where her voice affects the grieving Lord of Dead Ends. Outside, white flowers grow along the sidewalks, carrying scents of night-blooming flowers, cinnamon biscuits, mastic liqueur, nougat, salted seeds, jasmine and honeysuckle. The creatures also give the fantasy its political dimension: they are unwanted foreigners seeking either acceptance or a place to belong.

roasted with desire and sweet as a caramelized almond

· Narrator describing Alice’s voiceThe metaphor captures the effect of Alice’s singing on the grieving Lord of Dead Ends.
About this summary

Originally published by Kathimerini in Greek. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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