For Elísabet Benavent (Gandía, 1984), words are “a lifesaver”. She herself often recognizes it on her social networks and confirms it in an interview with La Vanguardia, in which she talks about her new book Slow Embraces (Sum of Letters), which arrives in bookstores on November 10. The writer advances that, although it is not her most personal book, "because fiction often hides a lot of truth", it is "the most intimate work of all that I have done". In it, she collects different writings, poems and reflections that she has published on social networks since 2017.
“The idea was to bring together five years of shared texts. It was a project that was not born directly from me, but from my readers. There were many people who had once told me how nice it would be to have at hand all the independent stories that I publish on my social networks. Being able to consult it in a volume without having to go to the application or turn on the computer. It was something that had been on my mind for a long time but that my editor and I decided to carry forward this past Sant Jordi, when a girl approached us to ask us in person”, explains the Valencian.
Social networks and Benavent form an unbeatable tandem. The platforms not only helped him become known at the time and create stories, but also allowed him to expand his work, to the point of managing to sell more than 3 and a half million copies of his books. In fact, the author was born as such in networks such as Beta Coquette, a name that she still retains today in her profiles and the person she transforms into when she picks up the pen. “Years ago I turned my Instagram into a meeting point with my readers. Networks, in addition to visibility, give me greater freedom. The post I made yesterday doesn't have to be consistent with today's. I can experiment, try myself, get to know the reader better. They are my window to the world, ”she acknowledges. The truth is that this "literary laboratory", as she sometimes calls it, is at least effective, since it has more than 410,000 followers who "help me question myself and find different points of view on my stories."
Slow Embraces preserves this spirit and, therefore, makes it "something more than a book to use" because, he defends, "it is an open-hearted manuscript in which I take risks and expose myself". So much so that in his pages he exposes what he considers his greatest romance: his idyll with words, because "they are probably the most precious thing I have." In one of his micro-stories he specifies it: “They have saved me from drowning in the pool of what I lack. Because writing I chew what happens to me, because writing I imagine distant realities, because writing I analyze myself and understand myself. I measure myself, hug myself, calm down. Words are, for me, a lifesaver, a way of life”. Although, he admits, “sometimes they force me to rethink everything until I can't take it anymore. I don't think it's something that happens exclusively to me. Giving too much thought to things is the disease of the 21st century. It's okay to question everything, but as long as that allows us to maintain balance.
Among the topics he addresses there is no lack of love, lack of love, the passage of time or complexes. “The latter is something I have always been interested in. Hiding what we don't like only makes it a problem. Just yesterday I saw a reel of a girl who talked about this. At sixteen we are self-conscious about advertisements. At twenty we compare ourselves with our friends and at thirty with ourselves. When we turn forty, we wonder why we weren't able to like each other at thirty. And so we lose all life. There comes a time when you understand this reflection, but that does not mean that you are going to get rid of it because we continue to live in a physical dictatorship.
Beyond the promotion of this new work, Benavent has been working side by side with Anna Castillo and Álvaro Mel for some time, protagonists of A perfect story, the series that comes to Netflix based on his book and of which he has been part of the production team . “It is just as I imagined it. Luckily I have been able to be part of this and many other projects. I always get involved in a thousand things at once and I love it. Of course, I think that next year I will try to take everything more calmly. We'll see if I can."
