Boulder: Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

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Conoce a Samsa, una mujer escandinava que la enamora, se sienten bien juntas, empiezan una relación más o menos estable, se ven cada vez que el barco vuelve a puerto. Un día Samsa le dice que se va, que vuelve a su país, a Noruega. Ella lo deja todo atrás y la sigue, se adapta a todo por amor, pero se siente bien. Después de años de convivencia Samsa decide ser madre y empieza el proceso. Ella se siente fuera de lugar, se siente excluida, más aún cuando nace la niña; la relación que se establece entre madre e hija es tan fuerte e interdependiente que no hay lugar para ella... Debe replantearse su vida y su relación... An explosively witty, intense novel about freedom, desire and the body — Baltasar's voice is as bracing and sharp as cold mountain air, and her queer exploration of being and intimacy is intoxicating. Raw, fresh and uncompromising new writing.’ Imma Monsó Eva Baltasar, escribe sobre el amor, afila, pero no lima. En su segunda parte de Boulder , tríptico iniciado con Permafrost, el amor se escurre con aspereza y la libertad se templa entre empanadas. Life develops without overwhelming me, it squeezes into every minute, it implodes; I hold it in my hands. I can give anything up, because nothing is essential when you refuse to imprison life in a narrative.”

Eva Baltasar - Wikipedia Eva Baltasar - Wikipedia

The thing is Boulder has motherly instincts as well as at one point in the novel, holds the baby and feels a sort of kindred to her, a bond which develops in the novel’s conclusion. Eva Baltasar guanya el premi Gabriel Ferrater de poesia". ara.cat. March 9, 2016 . Retrieved February 3, 2019. The book is a modern love story – global, queer, existential in its moral hierarchies – but it is also a rumination on those two most ancient of words: lover and mother … A novel that lionizes the desire to be alone even as it recognizes the beauty and grace found within a family.’ Boulder is the second installment of a triptych in which Eva Baltasar explores in first person the universe of three different women, who live the contradictions of their time. Despite some qualms about the writing, I thought Boulder was a refreshing novel with a subversive take on motherhood, gender roles and relationships. Cómo he disfrutado de este libro! Tenía las expectativas altas ya que “Permafrost”, el primero de los libros de este tríptico de Baltasar, me había gustado mucho. “Boulder” me ha gustado incluso más, pero de una forma muy diferente. En este libro encontramos una narración madura y pensada. Hay párrafos que he querido leer hasta en tres ocasiones. Párrafos sublimes. Me siento muy afortunada cuando tengo la suerte de leer libros tan bien escritos, tan cargados de magia. El domino de Baltasar en la escritura me resulta brillante.Una roca en medio del mar, al raso y bajo la influencia del sol y los temporales que acontecen en aguas abiertas. Impasible, dura, solitaria, Boulder es así, o esto cree desde la cocina de un barco mercante com el que navega por la costa chilena. Una soledad que no puede mantener cuando, en una de las paradas, a Chaitén, descubre el calor de otro cuerpo que la atrapa como una tela de araña. Un amor que la llevará a la otra punta del mundo, reinventando su vida hasta donde nunca hubiera imaginado aquellas noches que fumaba a la proa del barco.⁣ What follows is the poignant struggle of Boulder to find a divine balance between the independent, free, strong-willed soul she is and her passionate love for Samsa, love pushes her outward only to meet the strong wall of solitude which always pulls her inside to be herself to embrace that fabulous freedom wherein no one can touch her soul. However, the humanly desire for Samsa who is one and whole like a god, gives in her freedom to assuage her wild and chaotic heart through the ardour of love. Her love compels and coerces her to accede to the unexpected motherhood brought in by the incessant desire of her lover. The things they used to love to do with each other, do not seem to bother them, and in fact, stretch away the fabric of relationship so much so that they become invisible to each other. Boulder becomes a troubled soul whose emotional wounds rots and seethe over the sea of turbulence, the flower which bloomed with life withered away as dry petals of anguish and pain. Eva Baltasar's Permafrost, translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanches, is a mordant novel that takes the demands of the body seriously. Sex, death, piss, and illness run throughout this unrepentant monologue, all pointing to a truth of our condition that many polite writers steer safely clear of, but one that tells us just what it is to be a human in an ill-fitting world.' Anna Claire Weber Setting the story in Iceland added to its atmosphere of nordic depression and must have been meant as a metaphor. The writer Eva Baltasar is known primarily as a poet, although this is the 2nd of a triptych of novels, preceded by Permagel (2018) (translated into English as Permafrost (2018)) and followed by Mamut (2022) (not yet translated into English). Todo ha cambiado excepto su apodo, Boulder: esas enormes piedras aisladas en medio del paisaje, expuestas a todo sin que nadie sepa de dónde vienen ni porque están ahí.

Book Review: “Boulder,” by Eva Baltasar - The New York Times

Eschewing the traditional schema of gendered roles being biologically hard-wired, of reluctance to settle being textually gendered masculine, Baltasar presents us with a story where both positions are occupied by women: the ex-career girl turned earth-mother who sacrifices herself willingly to motherhood and the perpetual wanderer who sees no need to be anything beyond herself, who builds a tentative relationship with her daughter but who refuses to be defined by cultural maternal constructions that are meaningless to her. Holding Tinna like this makes me feel strange and new. It makes me think of all the words that have grown ove A magma of sensations, doubts and aspirations. A trove of treasures. The piquancy of this novel, a surprise word-of-mouth hit in Spain, comes from the gap between the fantasies projected onto the narrator by the women around her––who see in her a free and contented woman––and the suffocating feeling constricting her. ’ Cohabitation: “Life tears open like a wound that rots and bubbles. If anyone talks to me about happiness, I swear to God I’ll break their face” (17).The process of reading of a book generally takes it course through it gradually getting under skin of the reader after overcoming the reader’s initial phase of apprehension but Boulder starts with explosion, straightway blowing the readers and their minds without any superfluousness as if it rides over a sense of utmost urgency on to a quest for the ultimate truth. The narrator of the story pulls in the reader, dwindling over the tumultuous and violent waves of the sea of emotions, to the vortex of the sea wherein the heart of matter may lie, without wasting many words. Boulder takes the reader on a hot and stormy ride of sex, passion, desires and lust to sacred emotion of love, wherein we meet Samsa, whom she loves passionately so much so that she moves to her place of strange and unfamiliar surroundings in Iceland. The emptiness of solitude fills her life as if her existence takes dive in the hell of nothingness, she looks for solace in the company of other casual hook-ups, but nothing brings consolation to her soul. However, their daughter-Tinna stimulates a new sense of intimacy in her Boulder, intimacy which is strange and afresh, as if the flower may bloom again on the anew feeling of love and affection. Boulder finds herself amidst the soup of her fire of independence and the newly felt feeling of endearment, she has to churn the froth with her soul to decide the fate of her life. Eva Baltasar: “La solitud és l’única manera de trobar-se amb un mateix. Seria bo que els nens ho aprenguessin” La esperada segunda novela de la escritora y poeta Eva Baltasar llega en traducción de Nicole d'Amonville para los lectores en lengua española. Dos años después de su exitoso debut en catalán con Permagel(Club Editor, 2018), la autora firma una historia tan poética y vibrante como la que la dio a conocer.