Francesca Rodríguez (Sabadell, 1967) is a journalist, and it shows. Short sentences, good rhythm and the essential adjectives and literary figures so that Secrets (Fanbooks), his first published youth novel, has all the incentives for young people to get hooked on reading, "which is not easy with the amount of stimuli that have," he says.
Teenage love, police plot, disappointments, female protagonists with weight and character and the force of the truth, which bursts everything when it emerges. “When you explain something to a person, it stops being a secret because you no longer control it and you don't know if it will end up being explained or not, which is what happens in this story. But there are secrets that are kept until the end and revealing them ends up being a relief for the people who have kept them. It is that of 'I free myself from a lie that is hurting me,' ”says the author.
The novel is led by women, who are sensitive and strong. Rodríguez, who has worked at El 9 Nou de Sabadell, La Vanguardia, TVE and is now director of communication for the Sabadell City Council, assures that she did not anticipate it: "It was not planned that they would be all female protagonists, but the plot took me there . In this story of strong women, there are men who rule: the police chief is a man, the director of the television station is a man... It is a reflection of society; Men are in a position of power.
But women take the reins of this story: “That's how it is and you can see it when the police chief reproaches the inspector for not going fast enough, that he wants immediate results, that this is perhaps a more masculine way of operating. And the inspector tells her: 'I'll get it, but in my own way', which is, perhaps, the most feminine way of getting things, of looking for how to get to the end, but in a kinder way. Women have a different style of functioning from that of men, which perhaps leads us to better results”.
The novel leaves you breathless at first: “It's like this to capture the reader from the first moment and prevent them from leaving the book to go watch TikTok, get hooked on a video game or watch the television series they are watching at the moment. The way to hook an adolescent audience to the book is with their way of seeing the world, which is more hectic”.
That and that the chapters "are short and that you always leave the reader with the desire to continue, to say: 'Oysters, I want to know what happens'". Then there is the language: "It is very direct, very similar to what we journalists use when we work: very direct phrases, without passives, with adjectives, but not excessive... It is true that when you write for a medium you cannot use depending on which figures literary, because it doesn't touch, but it is also true that when you write literature the language does not have to be dark and convoluted. In my case, it is journalistic language that influences literature”.
And this is the key word: literature, because we are dealing with a quality novel, intended for a young reader, which an adult savors with delight: “If we want young people to be readers, we have to offer them good literature. You cannot expect them to go from children's literature and children's sagas to adult literature without a strip in the middle that is good literature, but for adolescents. Perhaps we must vindicate this quality youth literature”.
