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 favorite cartoon series do for Halloween or Christmas: like a story of episodes, a tale of one, one of the other (there are new adventures of Futurama !). In A les dues seran les tres (Quaderns Crema), Sergi Pàmies tells stories of a writer who goes to conferences, meets other writers older than him, reviews skipped moments of his life, linked by a thematic thread (the guitars that has had, including the envied Ovation), and extracts a biographical, psychological, aesthetic and moral juice from it. In Biografia del foc (Proa / Libros del Asteroide) by Carlota Gurt there is also a writer's life, more violent, with that point of wildness that her stories have: one of the protagonists goes around the world in a tank, which represents the armor that had to be made to survive. We will have two.
It's the year of books about mothers: loved and criticized. In La mestra i la Bèstia (Anagrama) by Imma Monsó the mother has an unpredictable and magnetic character that captures the reader, influences the character of the daughter and introduces the theme of complexity and double life, emotional and political. In I'll say I made it up by Marta Marín-Dòmine (Edicions 62) the reproaches and emotional turbulence weigh more heavily, with regret for unlived happiness. Whereas A casa teníem un hymne (L'Altra), by Maria Climent, is a luminous book, in which the characters look for solutions to their individual problems in a collective horizon. 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, and has republished the classic El jardí dels set crepuscles, which if you haven't read I think you'll like it. Palol stirs the guts of the society we live in, mechanized, authoritarian, based on the case of a man called to the sancta sanctorum of programmed civilization. These are books that require time and continuous reading and a few days of holidays in a row, sprinkled with parties, can serve as a gateway. Palol is unrepeatable. Six.
Piti Español and Tuli Márquez have come to literature from theatre, music and television, which is an interesting singularity. In Memoria 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 the figure of Salvador Puig Antich as one of the main references. 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 lot of money, in an agency of advertising In 2008 he split it in half and has ended up doing tricks, discouraged, depressed amidst the indifference of young people. seven and eight
With I gave you eyes and you looked at 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 al paisaje built with stories from Canto jo i la muntanya balla to the dreamlike, upturned and caustic world of today's book, which makes the peasant women sing the cantata of their desires and frustrations, and highlights female solidarity in the fight for life. A book about venerated and feared figures, witches who represent many women today. There is now a lot of fantastic literature written by women, but the tradition is rather short, in Catalan. Males Herbes recovers a book from the thirties, Els habitantes del pis 200 by Elvira Augusta Lewi, a pioneering woman who wrote about modern decoration with great judgment and who disappeared from the map after the war. The recovery of Males Herbes revives its mystery. nine past ten
Miquel Barceló Perelló was one of the great specialists in the Muslim world in Catalonia, historian and archaeologist. Anagrama has republished in El cercle de Felanitx two books that reconstruct two books he knew as a teenager: El terme de Manacor and Trenc d'alba, alongside an unpublished novel, L'hivern de 1947, in the town. The volume also includes a very good text about the other Miquel Barceló, the painter of caves, fish and bullfighters, in which the author offers readers a history lesson based on the remains found in an excavation. This book is associated with another volume that is not narrative, but which I can recommend: Guillem Frontera. One writer, one world (Ensiola). Frontera has been a man of action, art 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 plujja. eleven and twelve
In Ukraina mon amour (Empúries) Carles Torner has written a war novel, around a translator who returns to Barcelona and experiences the contradictions of a progressive bad conscience. The most painted woman (Proa), by Màrius Serra, also has a journalistic component. It reconstructs the experience of the painter Palau Ferré who reached a perverse agreement by which he had to give all his work, as he says, sold by weight. The story had a certain media impact in the years of the last Franco regime. 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 (La Campana), which has been a surprisingly successful novel: direct, cheeky, good to read. It tells the story of a girl who arrives in the United States as a bouncer and all the sentimental, erotic and work adventures. fifteen
Good news: L'azar i les ombres by Julià de Jòdar has been well received. Comanegra has gathered the three books of the trilogy in a single volume that has been the subject of readings, interpretations and praise. Now a quarter is being prepared. Happy New Year.
