The writer, to a large extent, is born. What it manages to materialize is a sum of factors that could well be considered as this becoming, the other part of the famous dichotomy about the deterministic nature of any trade.
Soledad Puertolas He published his first novel shortly after turning 30, after having collected that personal baggage that makes one or one think that perhaps he has something to tell and that ends up assuming a taste for finding new stories.
This author began several studies but ended up with a degree in journalism (perhaps already there she began to glimpse something of her passion about telling things). And after performing his official job (worth the braying), he decided to write that first book that he was pushing to get out. It was the year 1979 and the destiny of Solitude as a writer as a professional had just materialized ..., until a day like today in which she has even been a member of the Royal Academy of the Language since 2010.
His exquisite narrative tells us about today's characters and personal circumstances that always concern us in one way or another, since his characters are a reflection of any of us and our search for identity.
3 recommended novels by Soledad Puértolas
History of a coat
The material and its fascinating charm. The capacity of the inert to bring glimpses of life in its smell, in its structure, in its material composition that seems to be able to trap past and life already absent.
The disparate sensations of the same event depending on which eyes contemplate it. Diffuse realities between the boundaries of the subjective and what is marked as imperative or normal ... A delightful novel of characters dedicated to the cause of seeking answers to unexpected questions in the planned plan of the supposed destiny that we carve out for ourselves ...
Summary: The woman who searches the wardrobes of her sisters and her widowed father for the coat that had belonged to her mother points out, in the itinerary of her search, the clues through which other stories will unfold.
The moments of glory of a professional photographer who had to give up photography to support a large family, the dreams and tribulations of adolescents, the loss of memory, the loneliness of a mother who feels rejected by her son, the The difficulty of coping with disease, the perplexity of middle age, the price of clandestine adventures, the longing for travel, the hostility of unknown territories, the irruption of light in the midst of darkness, the curiosity inspired by neighbors, doubts before making a decision ... The characters are immersed in a similar moral atmosphere.
Arenal days
As I say, the mastery of structuring spiral stories, sometimes crossed tangentially, is a virtue of this author.
Life is a small sample of existence, and yet when lives intersect the possibilities reach an almost infinite exponentiality. The small, the mundane of the human being and the possibility of the infinite in the near.
Synopsis: Some photos taken around a swimming pool in a hotel in Delhi, trips with strangers, longtime friends, opera fans, phones that do not work, the heat in the middle of the night, the need to drinking whiskey, adventures with married men, the affection of parents, helpless children, philanthropic ladies, secluded women, family responsibilities, the desire to throw everything away….
And lives, as the story unfolds, are tracing a circular pattern, because no life ends completely as long as it can be mixed, braided with the others.
It is true, as the narrator tells us, quoting Quevedo, that "only the fugitive remains and lasts." It is precisely the fleeting moments in which beauty is perceived that draw the drawing that relates the characters.
Time is wise and perhaps forgiving. It advances in various directions to leave in the air a vague message of harmony, a support so that the search for beauty, love, happiness, is not so arduous, so that the hope of a perfect, ideal meeting remains live.
Opera music
The suggestive mixture of the historical and the intrahistoric seduces any reader with that theatricality of what was witnessed in the first person to become, precisely, a more complete History.
The survivors of any nearby period, but subjected to very different circumstances, are those theater characters who intervene very close to us, who tell us about their pains and glories, who transmit the ultimate truth of the testimony distilled from the facts.
And no one better than Soledad Puértolas, with that handling of the plot intimacy turned into a plot towards the emotions, for an invitation to the world of the second half of the XNUMXth century. From the focus of the Spanish future, with its fratricidal war and its subsequent dictatorship, we travel with three women who take us from the most violent Spain first and then retrograde, to other historical contexts of a world that does not mark a very different evolution. as for endless conflicts; Attacked from some fronts or others, by some political proposals or others.
Exciting testimonies from a twentieth century in which History followed one another as an alternation of interests that never finished clearing horizons and in whose days living was always an adventure with dark perspectives of tragedy.
On the personal scale, the panorama was limited to those world ups and downs between ideologies that were campaigning from one country to another, moving hearts towards revolutions that were finally stifled in the most resounding failure; or towards the worst of the badly managed success decays.
But it is easy to guess that it is enriched by a narrative like this one about factions, violence, war drums or thriving economic interests, it is always that human side that ends up being misplaced among so many Manichean tensions. The souls of three leading women are in charge of converting history into experiences, impressions, emotions, in that flash of humanity facing the abyss. Elvira, Alba and Valentina compose their overtures of what they have to live and declaim aloud the arias of their circumstances, between dialogues even with their own soul between choruses of wars that never stop playing in the background.
In the end, the most exciting intra-stories end up exceeding the dimension of any context. And the most fascinating acts of what happened are almost never included in the official scripts. Love, guilt, despair and a return to hope have no possible chronicle.
And this is how we have to give thanks to novels like this one, in which literature once again takes the leading role of the essentially human.
Other books by Soledad Puértolas ...
The night remains
In the difficulty of writing character novels as a photo album, Soledad Puértolas demonstrates a scenographic mastery that is difficult to compare.
Aurora reviews all those moments that her memory treasures, and at times reality becomes blurred, the fundamental characters of her life seem to share a script that sinisterly fits into her supposed free will ...
To the point that, at times, when the lucid plan of your life seems to close in on itself, only a few shelters can give you wonderful moments of shelter.
Synopsis: Taking as a starting point a little-traveled street in Madrid and a character who has been limiting the scene of his life to his apartment and his street, Soledad Puértolas traces the story of different lives, marked by passion, clandestine loves , artistic ambition, bewilderment, the pursuit of happiness.
With these elements and some more, the plot that surrounds Aurora is being configured, a thirty-year-old woman who little by little begins to think that her life is being organized from the outside. Too many coincidences and repetitions.
A chain of coincidences begins to spin. Chance prevails. The interpretations follow one another and they could still go on giving more turns, infinite turns.
The game has been decided elsewhere, and when it ends the players do not disappear from the scene, the curtain does not close. The protagonist knows that she would play again and keep waiting because there is always a remainder of everything, mistakes, failures, false or true loves. There remains the refuge, the retreat, the gap, the offering of the night.
Quartet
The magic of stories and their protagonists with nothing to do with each other, without ties that end up intertwining them. And yet the magic of chance that summons them in the reader's imagination to give an account of his feats, his prodigies and his miseries as in an expositor of the world composed as a mosaic of souls...
The princess of a kingdom suffers from a strange illness; None of the doctors, wise men and healers consulted by her father the king finds the cure, and it will come in an unexpected way...
The rich man of a town hires a teacher for his children and allows other children to attend classes; One of them falls in love with the teacher and some time later will try to find her...
A young woman leaves the island where she lived with her widowed father, sets up a tea shop in the city and meets a client who mysteriously disappears...
A doctor's wife leaves him to go north to work as a scientist; One day he receives the news that she is very ill and she undertakes a trip to that remote place to see her for the last time...
Four stories in the classic way with a modern twist. Four stories that talk about love – not always consummated, sometimes elusive –, the passage of time, absences, reunions, secrets, stories that can have several possible endings...
Hello, I am looking for a novel by Soledad Puértolas published before the year 20002, in which a character named Araceli appears, I think it is in Queda la Noche, but I don't know for sure. Could someone who knows your novels inform me, please?
Well, I don't know what it can be. I already feel it