In recent years, books published by some major publishing houses are accompanied by highly illustrated dossiers with character sheets, a description of the setting and a text by the author which, in a more or less confidential tone, it tells you what he wanted to do when he wrote. The one in The Law of Winter by Gemma Ventura Farré (El Vendrell, 1990) refers to the graphic novel. It presents the protagonist, grandfather Ricard, Roser, the three beggars, the woman in the yellow shoes, the factory workers, with the sketching technique that is so fashionable and that gives it a modern air. It tells us - as the cover, drawn in the same style, also says - that this novel does not take place in the real world or - if you ask me - in the world of allegorical literature - which always has a background unfathomable, which resists being represented – but in a space of confluence between drama and play, wound and symbol, philosophy and scheme. It also, fatally, gives it the air of a product that corresponds to a literary award that needs to reach buyers with a simple idea and image. If it's a romance novel, a drawing with a girl covering her face. If it is a novel with a historical background, a black and white photo that, to make it more dynamic, is cropped.
Gemma Ventura Farré is a music teacher and deputy director of digital Catorze, where she publishes articles and interviews. It is the first novel he writes. It unfolds in a symbolic setting the relationship between a grandfather who is dying and a granddaughter who has not found her place in the world. There is sadness for loss and bewilderment in the face of agony. While the grandfather is unconscious in bed, the girl thinks that he must be in the kitchen, making an omelette, as if there is a dissociation between the body and the person. He revolts against Roser, the housekeeper, who treats the almost-deceased with disgust and contempt. And he looks for recreation and solace wandering around the town, one of those cursed towns that you find in Catalan literature from time to time: from the historical Guilleries by Ferran Garcia, to the Catalan victor Yoknapatawpha by Núria Bendicho Giró. The Catalan reference for this kind of literature - which has not been surpassed (Rodoreda, apart) - is L'estuari by Miquel Bauçà. It's hard to pin down a book with such visionary force. Next to him everything seems to happen.
Once Jaume Vallcorba, speaking of J.V. Foix said that young people reject their parents and go to their grandparents. This is what happens with the protagonist, who establishes an intimate connection with Ricard. It must be assumed that behind the abstraction there is a sentimental basis, perhaps a lived pain, which gives rise to intense moments, when for example the girl combs the dying man's hair and retrieves his clothes from a garbage bag where Roser, the wife of doing chores, has thrown it away. He brings a shirt to his face, sniffs it and smells loved. Other times it is the presence of death in everyday life: the little girl rescues a drowned heron from the pond, and burying it with a cross. And he is surprised to see a row of ants pass over the burial, indifferent to death. People are like these ants. The lyrical novel demands a great solidity of style.
The tone of The Law of Winter is not quite well taken. Many situations are resolved by short or very short sentences that feel like they run into each other. The idea of the sketch, the note, the sketchbook comes back to your mind. You have to think that after this first attempt, other more refined and mature books will come.
