The troubling theme of conjugal and domestic violence has been depicted in mainstream fiction. Modern literature abounds with stories of wife battering and domestic disputes. But Mexiccan-born, Montreal area author Gilberto Flores Patino presents this subject from an innovative viewpoint. He recounts the story of a young child, Esteban, who tells his story to his wooden toy horse.
Esteban is a narrative told by an eight-year-old boy who lives with his mother, Emily, in an artist’s colony in Mexico. Esteban’s parents are separated, with the father living in the United States. Esteban witnesses his mother’s relationship with her husband as well as the men who share her life later on, but he is perplexed by the scope of battering and abuse in those relationships.
His world is populated by sundry characters, such as a store owner, Senora Lena, and especially a young girl his own age, Marcela. It is Marcela’s family that ultimately offers Esteban comfort and refuge during the story’s finale. But the wooden horse is Esteban’s true confidant. The toy horse, purchased as a gift by his mother, is let in on Esteban’s thoughts and dreams and aspirations of becoming a writer.
The novel’s text consists entirely of Esteban's confessions to his wooden horse. The author capture’s Esteban’s youth and naivete remarkably well, as demonstrated when the title character is confused about the sounds emitting from a seashell or when he and his wooden horse win an equestrian event inside his make-believe world.
A prevailing theme connecting the novel is Esteban’s struggles to search for truth. An initial search involves finding his identity in a country that isn’t his own.
“..my mama speaks to me in English, which is why I don’t understand the stories she reads me. I speak Spanish, and everything I think, I think in Spanish. I wasn’t born here, I was born in the United States, but I came here when I was so little I feel like a Mexican, not a gringo, that’s why I like Spanish better,” Estefan confides to his wooden horse.
But young Esteban’s perspectives change throughout the novel. His mother’s reticence about his father’s life further piques his interest. Esteban is aware that his father is somewhere in America working in a bank, but his mother refuses to discuss the subject.
His focus shifts once more when his mother, a painting instructor at the Institute, fails to return from work one Friday evening. Esteban sets out to find his mother throughout the weekend, visiting the Institute, the town square, the market, and the home of a family friend to uncover his mother’s whereabouts.
But the author’s climax is almost anticlimatic – the reader can extrapolate the reason for Emily’s dissapearance quite readily. Still, Patino manages to convey Esteban’s inquietude regarding his mom’s disappearance quite well. The reader can feel Esteban’s thoughts, which are first of concern, then of sadness, and finally of anger.
For a story with a violent underlying theme, Esteban remains a story about a child. The child’s thoughts, told effectively in a first person account, give the reader a glimpse into how abuse affects children. Esteban’s anguish at the end heighten the pain that accompanies domestic violence.
