Some of this month’s releases and the list of the fiction and non-fiction books that were read the most.
“I gave you eyes and you looked into the darkness” by Irene Solà. Anagram, 176 pages, $23,900.
In 2019, Irene Solà published her novel “Canto yo y la Montaña Baila” and moved readers of her language, Catalan. Then, the impact reached the rest of Spain and later the entire world (the book has already been translated into more than 30 languages). This young writer’s literature (she was only 30 at the time) displayed elements of various traditions and echoes of modern literary movements, but it was unlike anything we had read before. His prose, forged in sustained poetic activity, brought to the novel an explosion of words with infinite semantic resonances. The story took place in a town and on a specific farm in the Pyrenees region, but time multiplied and protagonists from different centuries coexisted on the same stage, overlapping with magical beings, animals, plants and landscapes. An overwhelming baroque that forced you to read each paragraph several times to capture its overflowing richness.
“I gave you eyes and you looked at the darkness”, his new novel (published in 2023 in Spain and here in 2024) works with the same materials as his previous book, but this time the territory where the story takes place is the Guillerías mountains, in the north of Catalonia. There, on a farm (Masía Clavell), an old woman is about to die, watched over by the ghost-women of several generations and currently cared for by her granddaughter and great-granddaughter. The house lineage is cursed by an unfulfilled agreement with the devil. Men die tragically, children are born with various deformities and women are left alone. Nature corners them with its violence and rot. And the sky never stops opening for them.
As the author herself has stated, the folklore of the area is one of the sources of inspiration for her texts, a wealth that she confesses to having valued in all its dimension when she went to live in London, far from the land in which she was born and grew.
Winner of such important distinctions as the Anagrama Prize and the European Union Literature Prize, among others, Solà is one of the unavoidable voices of current literature in Catalan. In Spanish we can enjoy it thanks to the translation by Concha Cardeñoso Sáenz de Miera.
“Free gelatin” by Marina Abiuso. Planet, 232 pages, $27,100.
Laura is a journalist. She works as a producer on a morning radio show and is doing very well. She has a romantic relationship with a classmate, which is not defined as dating, and she also dates a college professor. But he has a problem that gets in the way of all his ties: his body. His kilos, he assumes, are the obstacle that prevents him from achieving happiness. Your achievements in love, social life or work are always in relation to the balance. She meticulously compares herself with the rest of the women, she undergoes devastating diets, she lives pending the gaze of others. Your entire world rests on a scale.
If literature can explain personal and social conflicts better than a thousand essays, “Jelly” is a perfect description of a drama of our time: trying to fit into the unrealistic body image that is imposed on women. Fun and agile, the first novel by Marina Abiuso – an excellent journalist – shows that she also has all the tools to shine in fiction.
““I am in love with my car.” by Fernando García. Planet, 272 pages, $28,900.
Relationships are built in unexpected ways. That of Fernando García, cultural journalist and art specialist, with his father he grew stronger in his passion for cars and there he found a language to express love. “A father, a son, four wheels” is the subtitle of this nostalgic memory, which is also a beautiful period painting.
“For four crazy days” by María Moreno. Stealth, 224 pages, $25,000.
The book is a compilation of articles published in various media and books. Short texts, masterful snapshots of Argentine characters and passions: San Martín, Borges, Eva Perón, Maradona, Carlos Menem and others. In the introduction, the author asks about the limits between journalism and literature. In your case, the edges are luckily confused.
The most read
Fiction
1-
“The Neville House 3. I am the wind”
Florence Bonelli
2-
“The vegetarian”
Han Kang
3-
“Blackwater: Part 1”
Michael McDowell
4-
“Greek class”
Han Kang
5-
“The Island of the Sleeping Woman”
Arturo Pérez Reverte
Non-fiction
1-
“This pain is not mine.”
Mark Wolynn
2-
“Happiness-New edition”
Gabriel Rolon
3-
“Chinese horoscope 2025”
Ludovica Squirru
4-
“Atomic habits”
James Clear
5-
“Nexus”
Yuval Noah Harari
Source: Yenny and El Ateneo Bookstores.
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