Francesca Rodríguez (Sabadell, 1967) is a journalist, and it shows. Short sentences, good rhythm and the adjectives and literary figures essential so that Secrets (Fanbooks), his first published youth novel, has all the enticements for young people to get hooked on reading, "which is not easy with the amount of stimuli they have", he says.
Teenage love, police plot, disappointments, female protagonists with weight and character and the force of the truth, which shatters everything when it emerges. "When you explain something to a person, it stops being a secret because you no longer control them 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 break for those who have kept them. It's that 'I'm freeing myself from a lie that's hurting me'".
The novel stars women. Women who are both sensitive and strong. Rodríguez, who has worked at El 9 Nou de Sabadell, La Vanguardia, TVE and is now communications director of Sabadell City Council, says that she did not plan for it: "It is not intended that everything be female protagonists, but the plot m "it took a long time". And this makes things happen in a different way in the novel: "In this story of strong women there are men in charge: the chief of police is a man, the director of the television station is a man. .. It is a reflection of society; men have power”.
But the women take the reins of this story: "That's how it is and you can see when the chief of police scolds the inspector for not going fast enough, that he wants immediate results, that this is perhaps the most masculine way of working, with quick results And the inspector tells her: 'I have my own way of doing it, I'll get it done, but in my own way', which is perhaps the most feminine way of getting things done, of finding how to get to the end, but in a kinder way. Women have a different way of working than men, which perhaps leads us to better results".
The novel has a beginning that almost takes the reader's breath away: "It is like this to capture the reader from the first moment and prevent him from leaving the book to go watch TikTok, get hooked on a video game or watch the series of television you are currently watching. The way to hook a teenage audience to the book is with their way of seeing the world, which is more fast-paced."
This and that the chapters are short, "that you always leave the reader wanting to continue, to say: 'Osters, I want to know what's going on'". Then there is the language: "It is very direct, very similar to what we journalists use: very direct sentences, without passives, with adjectives, but not excessive... It is true that when you write for a medium you cannot use which literary figures, because it doesn't touch, but it's also true that when you write literature, language doesn't have to be convoluted and convoluted. In my case, journalistic language influences literature".
And this is the key word: literature, because we are dealing with a quality novel, intended for a young reader, that an adult savors with delight: "If we want young people to be readers, we must offer them good literature You cannot pretend that they pass from children's literature to adult literature without there being a strip in the middle that is good literature, but for teenagers. Perhaps it is necessary to vindicate quality youth literature".
