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Eva Baltasar. Barcelona, ​​1978. Poet and writer, her latest novel, Boulder (Random), stars a woman in search of solitude and provisionality. A song to misanthropy that has not stopped adding readers during confinement.

How about confinement? Very good! I hardly ever left the house, although lately with the novels something else. I like to be here. The only difference is that before my wife went to work and the girls, one to high school and one to school, and now we are all four here. I am not suffering especially. I want it to end because I see that others do have a hard time. 'Boulder' came out on March 12, almost the eve of the state of alarm, but it is not doing badly. It was one of the best sellers in this rare Sant Jordi that we live in. I believe that each book makes its way and that this one will also end up finding its own. The truth is that I have not followed the track ... Yes, it has reached me that it was one of the best sellers that day but the truth is that I have no idea. Nor do I ask the publisher. His novels are full of characters who prefer to be alone, just what circumstances now demand of us and which seems to some to cost a world. I haven't read the newspapers in years or watched the news. I find out about things when I go to the store and the shopkeeper tells me or my wife explains something to me so, honestly, I don't know what will happen, if we will be able to respect social distance ... What I do hope is that each one can continue living it with the sensation, although it is very fictitious, of doing it freely. It was difficult before, I guess now it will be more. In the end what counts is living consistently, which is what I try to do the characters in my novels. Loneliness is frowned on in general, almost everything pushes us to constantly share our presence with the rest. You argue to the contrary. Loneliness offers the opportunity to find oneself, and that for me is something very important. Until you connect with you, you don't know what you are like or what kind of life you want to live, or even what kind of society you want to build. And that is something that only gives you that space of calm, tranquility and encounter with yourself. I feel lonely even though I live with my family. I have solitude spaces that I take good care of. If you want to change something, first you have to think about it and do it alone, although later you get together with others to do things, but the first reflection always occurs alone. Yes, that's why it's sometimes seen as dangerous. Although it has been forced at the moment, it must be taken as an opportunity to at least learn something. Better that than living this as a prison. I think we lived a life so out that we never found the time to live inside. If you know how to be with yourself, you will never be alone. Ideally, they would teach us from a young age. To the children? Yes, to look for spaces of tranquility, just as relations with the family are fostered. I am not talking about locking a child in a room for half an hour every day, but about providing spaces for reflection, of being with oneself. Boredom is not so bad! In fact, you were living alone in a house without light, in the mountains. I left the city looking for a quiet place to live without people. I tried it, I stayed a few years, until I found love, as it happens in the novel. But I would love to return to live isolated, I was very comfortable. In the country he had an austere and hard life. I felt at peace knowing that nobody depended on me and that nobody bothered me. You wake up whistling, you work hard and at night you get into bed and that's it. You're at peace. How do you deal with the sex scenes? In 'Boulder' they are high voltage. I never face writing. Sex scenes are always the easiest because after 15 years writing poetry, it is easy for me to find the images. The only thing to do when writing a sex scene is to capture a lived experience. After all, sex is practiced by all of us. You do not have to fab, or worry about the action moving forward. They come out alone, it is very natural to me. Is there no shame? No, because I write for myself. I don't write with a reader in mind. I do not care if what I write is published or not. Better if it is published, but once the book has been edited, I disagree. I am at peace, because I have written the book that I have wanted. If you like it fantastic, if not too. Why are there still so few books, movies and series with lesbians? I try to make it easy for myself when writing. I feel like a woman and a lesbian and that's why my characters are, but that's not the topic, the book tells a story of universal feelings. In fact, many men have confessed to me that they had felt very identified. Heterosexual men, in the antipodes of the protagonist, who when reading a sentence have understood things they felt and did not know how to express. When I write I don't try to reflect anything. I see myself as a symptom of an era. I am very lucky to be able to write what I want and to be able to live in freedom because before me there were men and women fighting for me to have these privileges today. In the book she describes motherhood as a process that destroys everything. It is a metamorphosis. Being happily pregnant myself, giving birth and raising I have seen myself like this, changing and becoming another unrecognizable person, a monster. The polarities are within everyone. There are as many possible maternities as there are mothers. I have been a pregnant mother twice and I have seen myself under that judging gaze. One day I remember that I got up and left a childbirth class because I was very uncomfortable and I said to myself: what are you doing here, what are you becoming? This is not you! But just not fitting into the social construction of what motherhood means is not going to make me a bad mother or worse than the others. He also talks about the fertility business, should it be? It's not clear to me. I myself have lived it with contradictions. On the one hand it was what we wanted. You are taking the steps to be taken, you are paying ... but on the other hand you think: what am I doing? I still don't quite know what to think. There are times when I squeak. I haven't come to any conclusions. Being so lonely, how do you handle public exposure? What about book clubs? I had never been to a book club. I have always read but never been interested in sharing it. I thought I would feel very exposed but I was surprised how much I enjoy them. I always leave them with a special warmth. Now they are virtual. I never thought I'd say this, but it's not the same.

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