An autumn with Sergi Pàmies and Carlota Gurt is a good autumn of a good year. Have you read them yet? They could do it like one of those episodes that the favorite cartoon series broadcast for Halloween or Christmas: like a story of episodes, a story of one, a story of the other (there are new Futurama adventures!). In A les dues seran les tres (Quaderns Crema), Sergi Pàmies explains stories of a writer who goes to conferences, meets other writers older than him, reviews different moments in his life, with a thematic thread (the guitars he has had , among them the envied Ovation), and extracts the biographical, psychological, aesthetic and moral juice from them. In Biografia del foc (Proa / Books of the Asteroid) by Carlota Gurt there is also a writer's life, more violent, with that point of savagery in her stories: the protagonist of one of them goes around the world in a tank, which represents the armor that has had to be built to survive. We already have the first two.
It is a year of books about mothers loved and criticized. In La mestra i la Bèstia (Anagrama) Imma Monsó the mother is not the exclusive protagonist, but she has an unpredictable and magnetic character that captivates the reader, influences the daughter's way of being and introduces the theme of complexity and doubleness. life, emotional and political. In Diré que m'ho he inventat by Marta Marín-Dòmine (Edicions 62) she weighs more the reproach and emotional turbulence, with the regret for unlived happiness. While A casa teníem un hymn (L'Altra), by Maria Climent, is a luminous book, in which the characters look for solutions to individual problems with a collective approach. Climent presents an alternative family structure with a mother and two daughters who love each other, understand each other and want to share their time. Three, four and five.
It has been the year of Miquel de Palol. Navona has published the last of his monumental novels, Bootes, in Catalan and Spanish. He has also reissued the classic El jardí dels set crepuscles, which if you haven't read it, I think you will like it. Palol delves into the wounds of the mechanized, authoritarian society, based on the case of a man called to the sanctum sanctorum of the programmed civilization. They are books that need time for continuous reading and a few days in a row on vacation, between parties, can open the door for them. Palol is unrepeatable. Six.
Piti Español and Tuli Márquez have come to literature from theater, music and television, which offers an interesting uniqueness. In Memòria de tots tres (Multiestudio Books) Piti Español tells the story of a group of friends in the last years of Francoism, drugs and political activities, with Salvador Puig Antich as a reference. Les voltes del món by Tuli Márquez (Alrevés Editorial) explains the consequences of the crisis for a couple of friends who have known each other since school: one is a disc jockey and the other worked, earning a fortune, in an advertising agency. The 2008 crisis represented a blow and has ended in rubbish jobs, depressed among the indifference of young people. Seven and eight.
With Et vaig donar ulls i vas mira les tenebres, which Anagrama has published in Catalan and Spanish, Irene Solà continues the exploration of her inner world, accompanied by thousands of readers. From the traumatized realism of Els dics to the landscape constructed with stories of Canto jo i la muntanya balla to the dreamlike and caustic world of the current book, in which he invites the women of a village to sing the cantata of their desires and frustrations, and highlights female solidarity in the fight for life. A book about revered and feared figures, who represent many women today.
Fantasy literature written by women is very abundant today but there is not much tradition in Catalan. Males Herbes recovers a book from the 1930s, Els habitants del pis 200 by Elvira Augusta Lewi, a pioneering woman who wrote about modern decoration with judgment and who disappeared from the map after the war. The recovery of Males Herbes revives the mystery of it. Nine and ten.
Miquel Barceló Perelló was one of the great specialists in the Muslim world in Catalonia, historian and archaeologist. In El cercle de Felanitx Anagrama has republished two books that reconstruct his world as a boy: El terme de Manacor and Trenc d'alba, along with an unpublished novel, L'hivern de 1947, a la vila. The volume also includes a very good text about the other Miquel Barceló, the painter of caves, fish and bullfighters, in which he offers readers a history lesson based on an excavation piece. This book is associated with another volume that is not narrative, but that I would like to recommend: Guillem Frontera. A writer, a mon (Ensiola). Frontera has been a man of action, gallery owner, author of novels about the corruption of Mallorca and a great book about the rural world of the island, La mort i la pluja. Eleven and twelve.
In Ucraïna mon amour (Empúries) Carles Torner has written a war novel, about a translator who returns to Barcelona and experiences the contradictions of progressive bad conscience. The most painted donut (Proa), by Màrius Serra, also has a journalistic component. He reconstructs the adventures of the painter Palau Ferré who reached a perverse agreement by which he had to give up all of his work, as they say, sold by weight. The story had a certain media impact in the last years of Franco's regime and Serra uses it to reflect on the place of creation in society. Thirteen and fourteen.
2023 will be the year of Les calces al sol by Regina Rodríguez Sirvent (The Bell), which has been the surprise hit novel: direct, shameless, a good read. It tells the story of a girl who arrives to the United States on a rebound and her sentimental, erotic and work adventures. Fifteen.
Good news: L’atzar i les ombres by Julià de Jòdar has been well received. Comanegra has brought together the three volumes of the trilogy in a single volume that has been the subject of readings, interpretations and praise. Now a fourth installment is being prepared. Happy new year.
