Boulder: Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

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En esta ocasión nuestra protagonista es Boulder, una mujer madura que nos ofrece su vida y todos sus pensamientos. Una mujer solitaria y con las cosas claras que un buen día, llevada por el deseo y lo que presupone que es el amor, deja el océano y su trabajo en un barco, para trasladarse a tierra y empezar una vida típica a la que no sabe si se acostumbrará. Así pues, acompañamos a Boulder en el viaje hacia lo común, una casa, una mujer y una hija. La normalidad de una vida de la que no sabe qué esperar. 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. Il fallait son écriture au plus près des sensations, pour dire ce beau personnage de femme verrouillée dans une carapace de silence, inadaptée au monde, déstabilisée par une histoire de couple imprévue qui la dépasse, et pour toujours hantée par l’appel du large.» Sylvie Tannett — “Boulder” d’Eva Baltasar : quand une femme ne veut pas d’enfant avec sa compagne Food: “If I’ve got one skill in the kitchen, it’s carving things up. The rest is hardly an art” (6). Eva Baltasar debuts as a novelist with a high voltage book about the self, the body, sex and the family. One of the books of the year.’

Boulder by Eva Baltasar | Goodreads Boulder by Eva Baltasar | Goodreads

Calling to mind the work of Herve Guibert and Olivia Laing, Permafrost is an iron fist swathed in velvet, a book at once inviting and intimidating, lush and severe, enormously witty, thoroughly intelligent, and devastatingly emotional. It is a text that trusts the wisdom of the body, finding pleasure everywhere—even in suicide, death, and disaster; this is the most weirdly uplifting book I have read in years, perhaps because it holds at its core such affection for all the nuances of being. Seamless, delicious, and nothing short of genius, Baltasar’s fiction debut gives us “the whole crush of humanity[…] concentrated in a place that is absolutely personal.”’ Rebecca Tamás An investigation of the body as an instrument for measuring pain and desire. A besieged, solemn and majestically painful body, which ideally embraces all of humanity.’

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). 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. Je la regarde et je chavire, bien qu’elle soit suédoise et touche le salaire souillé de sang d’une multinationale. Je la regarde et elle remplit tout l’espace. Mon regard est une corde qui l’entoure et l’amène vers moi. Elle lève les yeux, elle me trouve. Elle sait. Una mujer independiente, que gusta de la soledad, se encuentra bien en su mundo interior que ha hecho a su medida. Trabaja en un buque mercante como cocinera, no necesita más; baja del barco en algún puerto en busca de una compañía que la haga sentir viva, sin ataduras, sin compromisos. Este libro ha sido una lectura conjunta que ha generado un gran intercambio de opiniones. El libro me ha gustado, pero el debate sobre el libro, aún más.

Boulder | And Other Stories Boulder | And Other Stories

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.The shortlist for this year’s International Booker prize has been described by the chair of judges as “a list of remarkable variety” and “very cool and very sexy”.

Boulder’, d’Eva Baltasar, premi Òmnium a la millor novel·la ‘Boulder’, d’Eva Baltasar, premi Òmnium a la millor novel·la

Baltasar describes how you didn't think it could be done. It surpasses everything. One of the best books of the year’ Samsa is an Icelandic geologist with ‘white-blonde hair [and] swimmer’s shoulders’, who falls in love with Boulder. When she is offered a job in Reykjavik, the couple decide to move there together - the only alternative option is separation. A little novel about identity, especially queer identity, and how difficult it is sometimes to evolve ( in a relationship and by becoming a parent), without feeling that you lose yourself. Il fallait son écriture au plus près des sensations, pour dire ce beau personnage de femme verrouillée dans une carapace de silence, inadaptée au monde, déstabilisée par une histoire de couple imprévue qui la dépasse, et pour toujours hantée par l’appel du large.» “Boulder” d’Eva Baltasar : quand une femme ne veut pas d’enfant avec sa compagne —Sylvie TannettBoulder 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.