When I was born, my mother didn't speak", says Marga, one of the three protagonists just beginning A casa teníem un hymne (L'Altra Editorial), the new novel by Maria Climent (Amposta, 1985). And the fact is that the mother, Erne, stopped speaking for nine years, without anyone knowing why, and it wasn't until her youngest daughter was thirsty that she returned.
Climent does not remember where this premise came from, that "it is just one more thing among the themes touched on in the novel", but he was clear that "he wanted to make a rare mother, who has two daughters and raises them in their own way and how this affects them, it conditions them all their lives". And when her husband dies, she starts a new life by going to live in Tuscany. Fifteen years later, the daughters will arrive there, Marga, single who lives in a shared flat without a defined life or work project, and Remei, the eldest, who until now has had a life defined by everything that is known about it wait: she left the village for the capital, married to the boyfriend of her life, has a son and is a doctor in a hospital.
But life drowns him and unexpectedly drags the sister to visit the mother on a trip that "gives them an opportunity to meet again, to rebuild bridges and to encourage each other, above all, to dare to change the their lives", explains the author. In the process, all three will remember episodes of their lives that have brought them to where they are now, especially the experiences in the village where the young women grew up, Arnes (Terra Alta), on the border with Matarranya, in Aragon . Climent places it here partly because his first work, Gina (L’Altra, 2019), was already in La Ràpita “and he wanted to change a little, but not too much. In Arnes there is more of a stretch towards Aragon because it is easier to go to Vall-de-roures than to go down to Tortosa. It's funny because you go ten kilometers further and you have Queretes or Beseit, where they speak exactly the same but they don't feel Catalan at all but Aragonese, that freaked me out. In the end, they speak a variant of Tortosí, and my mother made it from Tortosa a bit to heal my health, but I did consult a lot with the Terra Alta variant, which has some differences”. "The town is almost like another protagonist, like watching all the time. It happens to many drunkards that if you want to study you have to leave and then the idea of coming back always hovers over us".
The novel progresses with the voices of the three protagonists, each from their own point of view: "I was interested in portraying how these inter-family relationships work between two daughters distanced from their mother who are different and similar at the same time, what is genetic and what is learned behavior, and how are they related". According to Climent, the reader "can identify with anyone, because in the end they are three women at different points in life and who have made very different decisions".
Behind it, there is a very serious story, a big secret: "In many families there are big secrets that have never been talked about, that maybe everyone in the town knows but not the specific person". Unlike Gina, but where part of the plot was based on her life, "here I had the freedom to invent everything and that relaxed me". In the end, the idea remains that everyone has the right to a second chance, to choose to be who they want to be and overcome the past.
