Welcome to Litsy!

This is a beautifully written book about one woman's life in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, though it is quite slow paced at the beginning.

My daughter found this #VMC edition for me last year, and I'm glad I finished it before my upcoming trip to Barcelona. I hope I'll have time to visit the Plaça del Diamant, where the book is set.

My love for this slim debut novel is all about the sentences; Eva Baltasar is a poet and you know it. Her lesbian protagonist cannot emotionally connect with other people but she certainly has a lot of sex… in between thinking about ways to kill herself. The narrative arc is very satisfying & I plan to read Baltasar‘s International Booker shortlisted 2nd novel soon. #Translation from Catalan by Julia Sanches. #LGBTQ

A successful suicide, these days, is heroic. The world is full of unscrupulous people certified in first aid: they‘re everywhere, gray and unassuming like female pigeons but aggressive like mothers.

I can see the beltway from the hospital room window. At night the cars look like comets driven by inscrutable mood swings.

Cadrona is microscopic, a cluster of modest houses in an infinite golf course, like the mound of dirt that signals an anthill in a bare field. Despite what movies would have you believe, small towns are boring.

Now and then, a lover would fall in love with me and I‘d have the impression that life was staring me right in the eye in its most unflattering wig. There‘s nothing worse than feeling like you belong entirely to someone else, having to hear that you‘re key to their happiness or unhappiness, reduced to a lego block.

It took me some time to finish and I have barely scratched the first layer of this monumental and overwhelming "symphony of the evil". This must be a gem for lovers of philosophy and literature.
A genius losing his most precious gift, his mind, writes a final confession to the love of his life.
Such engaging prose, extremely vivid scenes and timelines stratching over 300 years alternate within the same piece of dialogue and interior monologue.

Chunkster haul 📚

Several reviewers called this funny…no idea how they got to that. I‘m still unsure how I really feel about this Catalan novel. I think my biggest problem is I really disliked the protagonist but also feel so sad for her.

This delightful book of short stories with quirky characters, originally published in Catalan in 2015, was one that I won in the #EarlyReviewers program at #LibraryThing. The publisher even slipped a surprise bonus book to me in the envelope in which this book arrived.