The 2018 Nadal Prize ratified what had been a relevant literary takeoff in the Spanish scene, that of the Catalan writer Alejandro Palomas. When a poet is oriented towards the narrative, that point of lyricism is already assured. Images, metaphors, allegories, a whole sum of resources facilitate this transition from the rhymes of the sonnets to the more linear story. AND Alejandro Palomas has managed to achieve that excellence of prose, making it a shared formula, a fusion where the purely literary as art ends up shining above everything else.
Alejandro Palomas he writes about characters and their inner worlds, and places them in settings filled with those images of the poet, loaded with symbolism, magical moments, descriptions of emotions that transform reality. The subjective impression of the poet facilitates that arrival to the soul of the characters. Essential empathy ...
3 recommended novels from Alejandro Palomas
The Hoffman Secret
For me there are two capacities of great value in this storytelling: to get suggestive descriptions and to give the characters the prominence above all things. I don't want to say that getting these formal effects is the best, but for me it has its difficulty, and Palomas does it in novels like this.
Summary: Four members of the same family meet on the occasion of the death of Constanza, the grandmother, and ties and uprooting arise around them throughout a weekend, in an introspective, poetic and choral story, which describes a small closed universe with a lot of emotional force. The dreams and longings of a family broken by a secret hidden for years.
Constanza has just died after a long illness and in the cemetery, around her grave, memories are crowded together. Her daughter Martina, her grandchildren Lucas and Verónica, and her husband, Rodolfo Hoffman, a famous singer who fled to Argentina twenty years ago after a terrible event that ruined the future of all of them meet there.
Seeing the end of their days approaching, Rodolfo decides that the time has come to recover what they lost, uncovering the secret that forever changed their lives.
Between the evocation of the past and the hope of the future, this intense story of hidden feelings captivates us with the future of characters who sail together to overcome pain and loneliness. An enveloping novel that tells us, with sustained emotion, the adventure of believing again in the love that really matters.
A dog
His last narrative proposal, before winning the 2018 Nadal award. With this book he closed a trilogy very different from any other currently in style. It was not about something epic, or historical, but about the particular avatars of some simple, street characters. A trilogy intimist and existential highly valued by readers.
Summary: Three years have passed since New Year's Eve dinner at Amalia's house, and her life and that of her children since then has been a roller coaster of emotions, joys and losses. This afternoon they have met again at their house to have a picnic with a very special guest who has been able to meet the whole family for the first time and an Amalia who has displayed her best and worst skills, which ultimately makes her be at the same time the endearing and maddening mother of this particular family.
It begins so A dog. With Fer sitting in the cafeteria next to his mother's house, and with the sudden appearance of Amalia, who has just taken her dog Shirley for a walk after finishing the snack that everyone has had at home. And Fer, who decides not to worry her and decides to lie and not explain why he is there alone, without R, his dog.
But you won't be able to keep the mystery going too long. Amalia, despite her particular way of being, realizes everything and will accompany Fer in her silence until he decides to tell her everything. His sisters will also arrive with the news. And this is where the family encounter begins, or rather, is resumed.
The long wait that all members of the family live without knowing about R opens family fissures that have been badly patched in recent years. The supposedly calm life of the four is exposed and themes that until then had not been touched are revealed. There are pending accounts, bad answers, open sores, but also good memories, funny situations and a lot, but a lot of love.
The time that unites us
The time ... or rather the shared moments. The time between two adds. Love at different levels and from different roots. Women above all and love as born from the wombs capable of harboring life.
Summary: MencÃa is ninety years old, and although she is tired and age does not forgive, she remains on guard, furiously determined to watch over "her own" at any cost, until time and strength allow it. Menorca, Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Copenhagen ..., no place is too far if you have to come to the aid of the quiet LÃa so that she accepts the death of her eldest daughter and finally frees her from the guilt that does not allow her to live, or from the surly Flavia, so that she can bet on her own happiness at the other end of the world and finally know a love that makes her great.
Nothing and no one will be able to stop the immeasurable MencÃa when, drawing strength from weakness, he decides to save his granddaughter Inés from a sad end and recover her for life, or when he insists on carving a future for Bea and her little Gala better that nobody seems to bet on.
A moving and choral novel, here is the story of four generations of women who laugh and cry, who live and suffer, but who above all need each other above all else.
With a thousand nuances and registers, Alejandro Palomas offers us with The time that unites us a story that intertwines the love of mothers to daughters, from grandmothers to granddaughters and between sisters: a novel of emotions about unique women that overflows with humor, affection, wisdom and courage.
Other recommended books Alejandro Palomas...
this is not said
The writer's substratum. That space where each narrator finds the reasons to write as expiation or placebo. A fascinating place to meet the person even before the brilliant writer.
This is the most luminous, impressive and real book that anyone can write. After a childhood marked by sexual abuse, years of eternal bullying and a hypersensitivity that on many occasions brought him to the brink of suicide, Alejandro Palomas spins in these pages a serene and electrifying story with which he flies over childhood memories without filter, the unparalleled relationship with his mother, the shadow of a father finally disappeared and the power of imagination and writing as the last table of salvation.
This is the most sincere testimony of a man who decided to live and who achieved it thanks to his passion for inventing and sharing worlds, always with tenderness and humor, and who now transforms his life into the greatest of stories. Literature allowed him to create imaginary universes better than the life that surrounded him and over the years these fictions have helped him find the words to show the whole truth.
