In my idea, as simplistic as it is correct, that every good writer of children's and young people's literature is finally a virtuoso of the narrative capable of everything (because of the fact that being able to tune into the world of childhood or adolescence is an incomparable act of empathy), the example that I bring here today of Dear Santos joins that of other writers such as Elvira Lindo o Jordi Sierra and Fabra.
And creative fertility is another of the remarkable aspects of this type of narrator of such disparate stories. Only with the three mentioned could the library of any house be filled. Which says a lot about that overflowing imagination that boils in these little heads so well exercised in the creative.
In the case of Care Santos, it will soon reach 100 published books. You will probably get it when you are still in your 50s. Two books a year since he was born back in 1970.
In such a bibliography we find series of juvenile fantasy or of a purely juvenile nature, as well as stories for children, anthologies of stories and, of course, great novels for any reader of already more mature tastes.
Top 3 recommended novels of Care Santos
The death of Venus
There is no better place than a quiet mansion to shelter Mónica's fledgling family. From that inherited place, Monica wants to make her new home with Javier and the child they are waiting for.
As the mansion and its surroundings begin to manifest supernatural aspects, the suitability of the new home begins to falter. At the moment in which we discover that it is a disturbing story of specters capable of interacting with the inhabitants of the other side such as Monica and Javier, we are already so trapped by the magnetism of the house, as well as by curiosity about the fate of Javier and Mónica, who we can't stop reading.
All communication between two planes always has a door, a place through which one and the other pass. When Mónica discovers the door, with her mysterious image of Venus, she embarks on the inadvisable adventure of learning more about those presences and her desire to communicate something.
And certainly they, the ghosts, had a lot to show down there, on the other side, where the past is sometimes frozen, suspended in limbo, waiting to be able to undertake its most appropriate timeline.
Dance of the dead
Death was something else before being reduced to trickery and ouija boards. I refer to that background of eternity where religion dictated a diversity of guidelines so that the arrival in the other world would distinguish one or the other. The point is that for this purpose, on this other side, who else who least took care of loading luggage while waiting for Charon's boat.
Samuel, a young orphan, has been adopted by a rich, mysterious and evil character ... At the request of the government of Elizabeth II, they both undertake a mission, together with a mysterious girl by whom Samuel will feel strangely attracted, to the oldest cemeteries: they must gather information on certain graves and the dead who occupy them. In his investigation, Samuel will discover shocking facts and a painful truth: nothing and nobody is what it seems.
Half life
This novel for adults (among its continuous forays into highly successful youth literature), has a feminist novel point but also an undeniable aspect of generational atonement in the sense that it speaks of any of us once we reach that moment in the middle of the path of life as Dante announced with that feeling of necessary reconciliation and final search for oneself.
5 friends: Julio, Olga, Nina, Lola and Marta, one last game in that drastic day in which each one ends up drawing their destiny. The game of garments acquires a very special tint that will end up marking them for the whole life (one more than the others).
30 years later they meet again, the game has already been closed many years ago, but the consequences, in the light of maturity, must be made explicit and healed.
Other recommended novels by Care Santos…
The crazy bird
Eccentricity or madness. Attitudes that are always necessary to break with the inertia that always ends in involution thanks to the most reactionary circles. There is no better place for it than a city like New York, capable of positioning itself as the world metropolis. There we find the madman with the birds and other madmen in search of transforming vanguards with which to end up giving that necessary turn that marks changes of the era.
The New York of the second half of the XNUMXth century begins to be the city of prodigies: boiling and attentive to everything that happens in the world. Eugene Schieffelin, a member of a family recently arrived in the city that has made a fortune, devotes himself to his cultured and outlandish hobbies; one of which excites the well-to-do, birdwatching.
In her circle there is a famous social chronicler who has proposed to go around the world, an immigrant of Asturian origin who wants to follow her, as well as a group of lovers of Shakespeare, who intend to introduce the starling to America, without suspecting that a century and a half later it will become a problem of colossal dimensions. A magical and naturalistic novel that is in tune with the madness for birds that has invaded all Western bookstores.
The air you breathe
When a writer like Care Santos deals with telling a story like this about books, love, culture and the concrete setting happens to be a real city, this city always wins.
This is what happens to Barcelona once you read this novel and you are imbued with history but above all with intra-histories, with characters who, like the specters of his great novel The Death of Venus, move between reality and fiction, reconverting every little corner of the city of Barcelona in a magical space where you can pass again and it will never be the same.
The protagonist, Virginia, in charge of the Palinuro bookstore, embarks on the adventure of a great mystery with a woman's name: Carlota Guillot.
