Without a scientific spirit, without looking at the best-seller lists, without creating a ranking, without having the audacity to say that we didn’t like those that are off the list. We take these proposals as a place from which to begin reading. These ten Spanish firms have taken their first step into the novel in 2024, and they have done so successfully. (These were the ones from 2023).
‘Bad Star’, by Julia Viejo (Blackie Books)
After several forays into anthologies and a book of stories titled There was a firefly in the cell (Blackie Books), Viejo debuts in the novel with a plot of bossism and shenanigans starring a thirteen-year-old girl named Vera. Located in a small town (“big hell,” as they say), the writer’s narrative has far-from-hidden references to the books of Celia by Elena Fortún, such as the sanatorium run by nuns who play soccer where her mother is admitted. She doesn’t call it psychiatric, but ‘The School’.
Pippi Longstocking also appears there, when the brothers Carmen and Miguel go to visit the protagonist in that house where they can do whatever they want because for a long time there is no adult figure to set limits. Vera’s father, in his own way, is also a pirate like the character with the red braids. But beyond influences, the writer has her own tone that allows her to describe with delicacy but without anesthesia what it means to be a girl at an unnamed age.
‘Pipas’, by Esther L. Calderón (Pumpkin Seeds)
Those whose adolescence and youth have passed in a reality (more or less) close but still free of cell phones will possibly remember their leisure time with friends on a carpet of pipe shells. In the 90s, it was common to find that trace of edible pastime – in addition to cigarette butts – under the benches of squares and parks in all Spanish towns and cities. Along with the arcades, they were the meeting points for the kids who, generally, did not belong to the wealthy class.
The protagonist of the novel was one of those girls who peeled pipes on the outskirts of Santander, daughter of a family that had achieved a supposed middle class through hard work. She imagines a future away from there with her colleagues before going to another city to study for a degree. In that time before the change, he lived a love triangle with Laura Pausini, Extremoduro or Radiohead as his soundtrack (the playlist is available on-line). A portrait of a generation – or a part of it – in which many will see themselves reflected.
‘The Cough’, by Alberto Otto (Trojan Horse)
This first foray into the novel by the Madrid writer – who had already published the book of short stories A chalet on Gran Vía (Terranova) in 2019 – was still conceived under the shelter of Sabina Urraca, the last guest editor of Caballo de Troya (by the way, her novel Zeal is one of the most notable of 2024). It is a short book, barely 200 pages, that can be read in one breath because it is not a story of shocks, although it is a story of concern.
In his debut, Otto narrates the life of a man haunted by a constant cough that only he can hear and that has conditioned his entire existence, since childhood. At his side, a person accompanies him in his daily life. They coexist in the daily life of walks and errands that could be anyone’s, although with a layer of uneasiness. The publisher has defined it as “An immersive domestic fable” and, although it has that bombastic promotional touch, it is a quite accurate phrase.
‘Moth’, by Alba Muñoz (Alfaguara)
It could be said that it is a fictionalized report, because it is based on the author’s real experiences although passed through the filter of memory and literature. Be that as it may, it is one of the most interesting titles of 2024 without a doubt. Even those who criticize the personal stories written by women have had to admit it.
‘Moth’ is the nickname that the protagonist’s father gave her when she was little and that she likes as little as her own father. He is responsible for filling her with fear when she announces at home that she has signed up for an expedition to Bosnia-Herzegovina, driven by the desire to carve out a future as a reporter. From that trip will emerge a boyfriend, a network of shelters for women victims of trafficking, a lot of threads to tie up and many reflections. “Women’s freedom is elusive, it is always hidden where you don’t expect it,” is just one of them.
‘A moment of tenderness and mercy’, by Irene Cuevas (Reservoir Books)
Few can boast that the bundle of their first novel includes a praise from Pedro Almodóvar, no less: “So far, my favorite women’s novel of the year. And the most unexpected.” Although these words serve to attract the reader, they also do so to set the bar for expectations very high, those that cannot always be met.
However, Cuevas passes the test with sympathy and expertise thanks to the story of a murderer out of necessity. After placing his mother in a psychiatric hospital for her suicidal tendencies, he decides to dedicate himself to killing old women, always at the expense of his older children. A lucrative business that helps him pay for the internment of his own mother and that goes from strength to strength until he falls in love with one of them. A mixture of black humor, suspense, softness and some drama that has given the author a good start in her career in the publishing industry.
‘The stolen phrases’, José Luis Sastre (Plaza & Janés)
This year, many listeners of the program today from Cadena Ser have discovered that José Luis Sastre, in addition to his radio voice, also has a literary one. Although he has also practiced written journalism, The stolen phrases It is his first foray into fictional narrative. All of its pages are invented, although as he told this media in an interview, it is a story that is not real “but there is still reality on each page.”
The plot of the book is structured around the relationship between a father and daughter who are about to separate after a lifetime together. The parent dies and his descendant wants him to end his days in the world in a dignified way, but he asks for something that she may not be able to give him. Those last shared moments got to know each other like they never had before. The author’s intention was not to write a sad novel, but the truth is that with the topic he chose it was difficult. For some readers it succeeded and for others not so much, although the quality has not been questioned.
‘The Fall of the Empire’, by Javier Gallego (Random House)
A group of friends expressed the party in the context of 15M, that outbreak of indignation that took over the squares peacefully and that was experienced – at least by society – as a milestone. Amalia and her friends, a gang that has already entered their thirties, tour the city’s bars for three nights in which they try to prolong the feeling of being still young. Who would want to abandon that mental framework when reality is governed by precariousness.
Javier Gallego, known for being the director of the podcast Raw meatcontributor to elDiario.es and writer of poems, has made his leap into novels with a passionate and somewhat painful generational portrait. But his book not only challenges those who lived through that moment as its protagonists but also calls for the understanding of those who remained on the margins and those who were still too young. As he commented in an interview here: “I wanted to tell what led to that social outbreak, which I believe will happen again.” Let your book serve as preparation.
‘Nothing more illusory’, by Marta Pérez-Carbonell (Lumen)
Literature within literature. A not strange choice for this debutante in the novel, who is a professor of Spanish literature at Colgate University in New York and earned her doctorate with research on the work of Javier Marías. That is to say, he knows how to handle well the genre he has chosen in his first novel.
In its plot, three individuals coincide on a train trip that departs from London towards Edinburgh. One is a professor who lives in the middle of a scandal after having published a novel whose plot is too similar to a real event. He, who is accompanied by one of his students, becomes a confidant to his traveling companion who, in turn, has her own personal torments. A trio of characters with whom he addresses issues such as the use of other people’s confidences and the stories that each person tells themselves, among others.
‘Book of the Days of Stanislaus Joyce’, by Diego Garrido (Anagrama)
Stanislaus Joyce’s role in life was not particularly pleasant from the outside. His family was far from being structured: alcohol had too strong a presence, the mother had died and the only one who seemed to have a head, apart from him, was James. Yes, the Joyce author of Ulyssesone of the most commented works (and abandoned by frustrated readers) in history.
Garrido has gotten into the head of this character who finds himself between the two waters of responsibility and foolishness through the pages of a supposed diary written in 1903. In this way, he moves in the universe of an author who obsesses and of whom he has translated pages and pages, according to his own words. It is a book that moves away from the possible tendencies detected – and sometimes meaninglessly reviled – in new writers such as autofiction. An interesting exercise, to say the least.
you will not touchby Núria Pérez (Salamandra)
Many will know her for her successful podcast Cabinet of curiositieswhich ran from 2019 to 2022 (and then disappeared from all platforms). Experienced in the world of advertising, Pérez knows how to make good use of her imagination to take the public where she wants: it is an addictive novel that weaves together the stories of three women who lived in different times and spaces.
In 1873, Mary Hessler carries out, in a hotel on the outskirts of London, an unspeakable act that changes her life. A century later, a Sorolla Museum worker named Marta spends her days wondering who the stranger she is exchanging messages with in Madrid is. Meanwhile, Adela deals in the British capital with a marriage on fire and the feeling of living in a reality that she does not identify. Their lives have nothing to do with each other, but guilt, the desire for love and social conditioning bring them into contact in a certain way. Engaging goings-on.
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