Since its publication in Spain, in October of last year, the novel “You will eat flowers” has never fallen from the top five positions in the bestseller ranking in its country. The volume already exceeds 20 editions and there are those who estimate that the number of copies sold is close to 200,000. The book has just begun its global journey with several translations and launches in Latin America for Spanish readers. In Argentina, it was published very recently and its author came to present it at the last Book Fair.
Lucía Solla Sobral was only 32 years old (today she is 37) when she started writing “You will eat flowers”his first novel but also the only thing he had put on paper in his life. Before there were no poems or essays or volumes of stories. This was his debut. And it was a dazzling start.
“The first thing I thought about was the topic. And I wrote a story with a scene between the two protagonists. A year later, the writer Marta Jiménez Serrano announced an online creative writing workshop. I signed up and she asked us to show her something we had written. I brought the story and she told me: ‘There you have a novel’. Then I started pulling the strings. I had always dreamed of being a writer, but I didn’t know how to do it,” Solla Sobral tells NEWS a while before the event where she will meet her Argentine readers, organized by the Cultural Center of Spain in Buenos Aires, responsible for her visit to the country.
What is the plot of this book about that captivates so many readers? The label to classify it (editors love labels) could be “gender violence.” But the story does not refer to physical or explicit attacks. Fairly, The type of violence he narrates is never reported. It is not even confessed.
The story
Marina, a 25-year-old girl, is seduced by Jaime, a man 20 years older; that step by step draws a fence around her to immobilize her. She has just lost her father and this attractive, rich and cultured man (the perfect Prince Charming) seems to compensate her with his enormous interest. He showers her with praise, overwhelms her with flowers, intimate dinners, and tons of expensive gifts. Marina quickly gets involved in the relationship. She leaves the apartment she shares with her best friend and moves into Jaime’s luxurious house. There, every day he is more at their mercy. Jaima manipulates her, threatens her, insists on controlling each of her feelings. The situation becomes a crisis when Marina’s health begins to be in danger and it is precisely her symptoms that precipitate the end..
Everyone asks it and Solla Sobral clarifies time and again that the only autobiographical thing in the novel is the death of her father, the rest is based on the testimony of other women, based on her interest in a form of violence (psychological) to which very little attention is paid.
“I didn’t know Jaime. At least not that one in particular. But I did experience similar things and so did my friends. I did the exercise of hanging out with them a lot, because practically all of them lived in some abusive relationship. I read a lot of essays and statistics. When I already had the first draft, I hired a psychologist to do Marina’s therapy. It helped me understand how abusers work. They do everything very little by little. But from the beginning there are signs, negative behaviors. And until the end there are positive things, because they are not abusers 24 hours a day, otherwise Marina would not be with him. There is always an ambivalence,” explains the writer when asked where the idea for the story came from.
An element that makes Marina’s situation more difficult is the great acceptance that Jaime has in his family circle. His great power of seduction and the “acting” with which he makes his love for her credible convinces his family that he is the perfect couple. “Even Marina’s extreme thinness. Her family sees it as a good thing, because thinness is rewarded. So if you’re thinner, you’re prettier. How good this man suits you!, they think. It’s a whole trap that doesn’t just depend on Jaime. There is an educational and social system that causes this situation,” the author clarifies.
A piece of information that Solla Sobral discovers gives him the idea for the outcome: within an abusive relationship, it is much more likely that someone will suffer from an eating disorder. When she accepts that she is suffering from bulimia, Marina becomes fully aware that she cannot continue with the relationship, that she has to get out of that story.
The age difference is also an important point. It is often said that years do not matter in love, but that is not true. “He has many more resources than her. It could also happen to a 45-year-old woman, but a 24 or 25-year-old woman has even more chances of it happening to her. He has 20 more years of experience, savings, everything. And he has more resources by gender and by class.”
Another life to write
Until very recently, Lucía worked making content for a “startup” and in her free time she did research for “Comerás flores”. Now, Thanks to the success of the book, he will dedicate himself completely to the task of writing. In fact, she is immersed in the project of another story that has nothing to do with the theme of her first novel. Meanwhile, he is still trying to adapt to his new life. As she herself says, she has to get used to “all this being normal.”
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