ANTONIO LUCAS
Madrid
LUIS ALEMANY
Madrid
ILLUSTRATIONS: EFEALCUADRADO
Saturday, July 4, 2020 - 01:51
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- The Paper Sphere. The summer books ... of 2019
- Summer 2018. The year of the bullets
Narrative
Chilean poet , by Alejandro Zambra (Anagrama)
Zambra's youth has a mirror in this novel of hers. The story of a first-time poet, lonely but at the same time surrounded by friends, lost on secondary streets in literature, just like in the soulless city in which he had to live. A story that accumulates naivety, initiation, adolescent amazement, ambition, broken love, literary passion and disappointments, written with a recognizable tremor: the direct writing of Zambra, so sweet and (at the same time) of serene sadness.
The combatants , by Cristina Morales (Anagrama)
The first novel by Cristina Morales (now recovered) already announced the narrative strength (technical and political) of this writer who turned the landscape of the Spanish narrative with Easy Reading (National Narrative Prize). The flammable youth of a theater group serves Morales to draw a generational portrait, provocative and provoked, that unfolds in that frontier space where literature raises its voice and is fiction and rabid reality.
Frankenstein's mother , Almudena Grandes (Tusquets)
It is the fifth installment of the writer in her project Episodes of an endless war and, probably, the most intense of the stories. On this occasion, she investigates what life was like for the mentally ill at the Ciempozuelos psychiatric complex, the mental health center run by the Hospital Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Around Aurora Rodríguez and her daughter Hildegart, Almudena Grandes recreates and portrays Spain from the 1950s and addresses the difference between people who are free and people who are free.
Terra Alta , by Javier Cercas (Planeta)
It is not exactly a detective novel, but the portrait of a path of inquiry that explores the topics that interest Cercas from his first steps in literature: the nature of heroism or the insistence of the past on the present. But this time he does it through a plot of intrigue, from pure fiction, which stars a policeman and ex-prisoner, Melchor Marín, a type redeemed by literature and who somehow runs away from his past in legitimate defense.
M. The son of the century by Antonio Scurati (Alfaguara).
It is the fictionalized biography of a man and, through him, also that of an entire epoch, that of the rise of fascism. But M. The son of the century is, above all, a powerful story about how a society decided to indulge in the delusions of greatness of one man (Benito Mussolini) told with the investigative capacity of an essay and the narrative rhythm of the best contemporary fiction.
Territory of Light (Impedimenta), by Yuko Tsushima
It is not exactly a novel about motherhood, but that tension and its joys dot the story. It is not only a damaged reflection on the shipwreck of a married couple, but this bad weather gives body to the novel. It is not only an experience of disappointment, but that wound covers the entire text. And yet it is a search for light when darkness occupies everything. A book that has a lot of revelation and powerful weather, translated by Tana Oshima.
Trilogy of Freddie Montgomery , by John Banville (Alfaguara)
Banville's novels are easy to recognize: the story is built around the melodious voice of an intelligent man, educated, sometimes a little perverse and sometimes a little melancholic and well endowed for self-parody and infatuation. When he looks back, that Banvillean character recounts a life of elusive affections that incomprehensibly slipped into infamy. The mold of that formula is in The Book of Evidence (1989), which was the beginning of the Freddie Montgomery Trilogy , gathered this year in a single volume.
The enigma of room 622 , by Joël Dicker (Alfaguara)
The world of the writer of Harry Québert moves. In The Riddle of Room 622 , Dicker's plot moves from the United States to his country, Switzerland, and mixes the classic suspense maze with an almost intimate story starring a Geneva writer named Joël and much like ... There is no need to give many more explanations. Part of the interest is on stage: the Switzerland of the new dicker is a modern melting point where bankers, spies, alleged Russian countesses and swindlers cross paths, along with a character that mimics the revered editor Bernard de Fallois.
Nine perfect strangers, by Liane Moriarty (Sum)
Australian novelist Liane Moriarty found many readers for the novel that later became Little Big Lies , the Nicole Kidman series. In Nine Perfect Strangers , the plot is a little less sinister and a little more joking. There are ladies who drink a lot, girls hooked on cosmetic surgery, therapists who have a very good opinion of ecstasy and other characters who at first seem stereotypes but who, as the pages turn, acquire a true texture, become human and justify the trip.
Find me , by André Aciman (Alfaguara)
André Aciman is another novelist whose books could be recognized if they were not signed on the cover. Find me is the reunion with Oliver, Elio and company, the characters of the legendary Call me by your name . 15 years have passed and everyone is looking for a zero tie with life, still stunned by the intensity of the emotions that united them in the beautiful years of initiation. The novel tells in three pieces how these characters become aware of their melancholy, decide to break with conformity, and go to meet again in the city of Nessim and Justine.
Corcira's Evil , by Lorenzo Silva (Destination)
The eleventh novel of the civil guard Rubén Bevilacqua faces a duty insinuated and postponed for many years by Silva: to relate his training in the lead years of the Basque Country. The story begins with the appearance on a beach of a dead body that corresponds to that of a member supposed to be less than ETA. The important thing, as always, is not the police plot but the look that Bevilacqua casts on the recent history of Spain, including the trip of the dictatorship to democracy and the dirty war of the State.
Non-fiction and memoirs
Encounters with books , by Stefan Zweig (Cliff)
This is yet another proof of Zweig's sagacity, erudition and elegance. but here not only as a writer, but as an extraordinary reader. The texts gathered here are a literary lesson and a testimony to his love for literature. But also, an invitation to dialogue, a passion so intense and frank that it infects those who come to these pages. In them is not only the life of a man, but the lives to live that good books unfold.
Tom Holland's Domain (Book Attic)
From the Beatles to monogamy, from the Pulp Fiction dialogues to secularism ... Many Europeans may no longer be active believers, but Christianity continues to be at the center of their culture and, in addition, it finds new faithful in the rest of the world. Tom Holland, the historian who became known as Dynasty. The story of the first emperors of Rome , this time explains the story of that success and addresses a fascinating question: why did the early Christians renounce a loose and liberal world like that of the pagan gods for one of restrictive morality?
Europeans , by Orlando Figes (Taurus)
Big issues can also be tackled from small personal stories. In The Europeans , Orlando Figes is supposed to study the formation and splendor of bourgeois culture shared by Germans, Italians, British, Scandinavians, French and, in our way, Spanish, but the grace is that his strategy is the short story of a love triangle between a Spanish opera singer, her husband, a French theater director, and a Russian man named Ivan Turgenev. Distant people, already but in which it is very easy to recognize even today. .
By the way , Woody Allen (Alliance)
Who would have thought that Woody Allen, a tender, comical and, at bottom, compassionate filmmaker and writer, would be at the center of the cultural, political and criminal debate of our time? The origin of the drama (his problematic family coexistence with Mia Farrow and children) hardly appears in A purpose of anything , so the reader will have to pretend that the mess does not exist. That said, the charm of the book is to recognize the landscapes and sensibilities of a thousand Allen films and discover where the dots in the drawing come from and how they are linked.
Infinity in a reed , by Irene Vallejo (Siruela)
Until now, there were hardly any books like this written in the Spanish language: informative essays written as a collage of kind stories that may seem anecdotal but that, taken together, offer an almost revolutionary idea about human history. Infinity in a reed, the unexpected best seller of the year is that: a theory of knowledge, its survival and its transmission through a technology called a book.
Infamy, the crime of ancient Rome , by Jeremy Toner (Desperta Ferro)
Half is a history book, half a law book and in tip, a reflection on the foundations of our liberal democracies. Infamy starts from a paradox: the Roman civilization developed a very refined legal system, especially in commercial matters. However, it failed in matters such as the security of the people and the alternation in power. Why? Based on this question, Toner analyzes what crime consisted of and how far it went in the glorious days of the Empire.
Artemisia , by Anna Banti (Peripheral).
The Nazi bombardment of Florence in August 1944 destroyed the manuscript of the novel that Anna Banti had dedicated to the figure of Artemisia Gentileschi. Banti found in the great painter of the Baroque (1593-1652 / 53), silenced by an eminently masculine history of art, the universal symbol of a fighting woman and in incessant struggle for the claim of her dignity, and also a «companion among the rubble », An imaginary friend who shared with her the burden of a permanent distrust of the environment towards her qualities. A stimulating read.
The beauty of the husband , by Anne Carson (Peripheral)
It was the first book published in Spain by Canadian Anne Carson, the last Princess of Asturias Award for Literature. This book is one of the most original and disturbing manifestations of poetry today. Subtitled A narrative essay in 29 tangos , reflects on the story of a marriage (the author's) falling apart. Illuminating, often brutal, poignant and darkly ironic, Carson's poems dazzle.
Given the circumstances , by Paco Inclán (Jekyll & Jill)
The work of this Valencian traveler and writer has a point of rigor and very personal delirium. On this occasion, Inclán abounds in travel literature, journalism and implausible reality in a handful of hilarious pictures ranging from the author's trip to Esperanto [locked in a museum], a walk through Havana in search of the joke that killed a nineteenth-century writer, the meeting with the last speaker of the linguistic hybrid between Romani and Basque or a visit to the Prague tavern that served as the setting for Roque Dalton's most baffling poem. A joyous read.
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