Esmeralda Berbel: "Mistreat is sometimes so subtle that it's hard to see and we think we're crazy"

Esmeralda Berbel (Badalona, ​​1961) spent three years writing The Forbidden (Three Sisters), her latest novel.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
24 October 2022 Monday 02:56
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Esmeralda Berbel: "Mistreat is sometimes so subtle that it's hard to see and we think we're crazy"

Esmeralda Berbel (Badalona, ​​1961) spent three years writing The Forbidden (Three Sisters), her latest novel. The writer admits to La Vanguardia that it was not easy for her and that before picking up the pen she asked herself a thousand and one times whether or not she was ready to write this story. “I finally understood that it was necessary and that there were so few narratives like this one, in which a relationship is unraveled to this point, that I thought it was important to write it down in case it could help someone,” acknowledges the author.

In its pages, Berbel reflects "a relationship of power but above all of manipulation". The reader enters what "seems like the story of a crush, but soon realizes that it is actually something else." It is inevitable that they ask her if it is an experience that she herself has gone through, since many of her works are impregnated with remnants of her life and experiences, such as Irse (Editorial Comba), in which she narrated her separation from the actor Eduard Fernández after 25 years together. “Is it an autobiographical work? Well, I would rather say that it is the biography of all of them. Or almost all of them. What is certain is that the material is absolutely truthful because it needed to be very well documented, otherwise it would have cost me more. But I have had the freedom of fiction and I present it as a novel”, she specifies.

Of course, he adds, “whoever wants to detect who the protagonists are will find enough clues to know. However, I found it more interesting not to. Many ask me if it is a vindictive book. But it is not like that, it is rather a book of poetic justice and denunciation. I am tired of women remaining silent in the face of injustices that are difficult to name or that until not so long ago did not have a name, such as the concept of gas lighting, which can be glimpsed in this book. In this relationship that I expose, everything is so subtle that it is hard to see the abuse at first. Many readers have told me that until almost half of the book they fall in love with the male protagonist. But soon little things are seen that are not quite normal and that become toxic, ”she admits.

Just as he does not put names, Berbel chooses not to put adjectives either. “It was not easy for me to objectify and say that someone is a narcissist, an arrogant or a psychopath. I find it more enriching that the reader reaches his own conclusions. That he sees it clearly, or if he doesn't want him not to see it, but that he ends up having an opinion based on many scenes and dialogues, and not because the author writes his opinion. I didn't want there to be any association of me or judgment of anything."

The main challenge, he acknowledges, was to build the protagonist. “It cost me a lot because she is in love with her. He does not, because he sees her as an object of desire that he will manipulate at will. However, her way of acting is confusing to the point of masking the abuse and making it look like a love story from the outside. I was interested because of this to see how a manipulation is built. And it's all thanks to the dosage that he, like many other men and women, exercise. Many times we wonder why a couple involved in a relationship like this continues and it is thanks, or rather because of the dosage. The stages of pleasure are quite extensive. For many days they are fine. More than good, in fact. In addition, to the woman, the intellectual baggage of her partner compensates and nurtures her to a certain extent. But suddenly one day the anger returns and everything becomes cloudy again. It is hard for her to see what is happening and she justifies him by saying that we all have something wrong. And so she until she became a submissive ”.

Writing this book, Berbel concludes, left her “exhausted”, to the point of not starting to write again until now, when she admits that she has started a book of stories. However, the exhibition of these events seems so relevant to him that, in order to reach more people, he anticipates that "next November we will do an exhibition at the FX film school in which 25 artists will perform a Lo forbidden. Andrés Corchero will dance, María Llopis will give a class on art and feminism, there will also be photographers… countless participants who will express how they best know this type of relationship from which it is better to flee”.