Finally a International Booker longlisted novel that excited me. I thought this day will not come this year. The second novel by Spain’s Eva Baltasar is billed as part of “a triptych that aims to explore the universes of three different women in the first person”… Baltasar’s protagonist is not unambiguously likeable but expresses her id in a sometimes chaotic, perhaps relatable manner. The translation skills of Julia Sanches have again been utilised here, too, and make for some remarkably visceral bursts of prose styling: both writers are standout talents.’

Boulder - Libro de Eva Baltasar: reseña, resumen y opiniones Boulder - Libro de Eva Baltasar: reseña, resumen y opiniones

Boulder’s view on motherhood is rather unconventional - still a social taboo - but not less valid than any other. Challenging social and gender roles, this novel also encompasses a difficult relationship between Boulder and her partner, two women with very different priorities - which is far from common in literature. Boulder is a free spirit and a wanderer in the first place, someone who refuses to conform to social expectations and values her independence above anything else. On the other hand, I wanted to see if there were any other options available for Boulder, but having in mind this narrator’s wandering nature, her choices make sense. Time Shelter, about the opening of a “clinic for the past” that offers a treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers, was described by the judges as an “inventive novel with an unexpectedly cheeky tone to it”. They added that it was a “fresh staging of old questions: the danger of selective memory, the inheritance of trauma, and how nostalgia can take a grip on society and become a comfort blanket – or a cancer”. 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.

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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.’ Every translation is a collaboration, regardless of how closely you work with the author. This is the second book I’ve translated by Eva Baltasar – I’m working on the third now – and my familiarity with her work informed the choices I made in Boulder. Of course, I also sent Eva some queries after finishing a draft. She has always been helpful, receptive and respectful of my work, and it’s a joy when that trust can flow in both directions.’ 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 Baltasar told Pink News that she owed a debt to writers and pioneers in the LGBTQ+ space that came before her, such as Virginia Woolf, whose book, Orlando, she received on her 12th birthday, ‘giving birth to a “long lasting love”’. Do you see any of Woolf’s influence on the author’s writing? This is a story which I've read before, many times; and it's simultaneously a story which I've never read before. A couple in love, bonded physically, come apart when one of them wants - needs - to have a baby, and the other partner goes along with it because she recognises Samsa's desire to be a mother. Cue fertility treatments, artificial insemination, pregnancy, childbirth, alienation and infidelity.

Boulder by Eva Baltasar, Julia Sanches | Waterstones

Eva Baltasar amazed me last year [with Permafrost], and my conversion has been now been completed.’ This book spoke to my battered gay heart and also there's a sentence where she describes someone's nose as being “tight as a gymnast's ass” and I haven't been able to stop thinking about that.’ Luis CorreaFor someone who chased desire and freedom, being rooted by responsibility is destabilizing and threatening. It is a feeling I suspect any couple must inevitably grapple with, and perhaps the humor of the ravaging hatred for it all here is a sort of escape, a dark pleasure to assuage one’s own worries of commitment. Not that Boulder dislikes Tinna, and it is moving watching Boulder embrace motherhood (even if it becomes a battle against Samsa). Cuando me llegó el libro pensé que el " Boulder" del título era un apellido de alguno de los personajes de la novela pero parece ser que se trata de una piedra de gran tamaño (como la fotografía de la portada), "una de esas grandes rocas solitarias, aisladas, expuestas a todo, que hay en el sur de la Patagonia, pedazos de mundo que sobraron después de la creación. Nadie saben de dónde provienen. Ni ellas entienden por qué siguen allí, por qué no se desgastan", según se describe en el libro, y que es como llama a la protagonista su pareja, describiendo perfectamente lo que acabará siendo ella en su relación amorosa, su resistencia al desgaste, su firmeza, su aguante en la relación, incluso cuando ya la sabe agotada. 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. ’ A novel about the beauty of love, sex and suicide, it strikes the perfect balance between passion, a dark sense of humour and tenderness.’ David Coates

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

La protagonista de la segunda obra de Eva Baltasar tampoco cae bien al lector, pero lo engancha y lo atrapa con una personalidad que cambia los límites de la feminidad y rompe con los estereotipos de género y maternidad. Una historia con muchas lecturas dónde – en menos de 150 páginas – se rebusca entre la trampa del amor, el peligro de la anhelada cotidianidad o, entre otros muchos conceptos, la maternidad absorbente o excluyente y vista desde otras miradas. Boulder se ve atrapada en una vida que no es suya, que cada vez la aleja más del amor y la ahoga, que le lleva a buscar auxilio en donde había sido feliz, en medio del océano.⁣ Baltasar, by way of Sanches’ translation, conjures a version of motherhood that shies away from the word. Instead, it’s an approximation, asking us to lean away from learned language, from the exact. And perhaps it shouldn’t have a name; maybe some things – like love – are meant to be hard to define.’ Food: “If I’ve got one skill in the kitchen, it’s carving things up. The rest is hardly an art” (6). 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. Boulder, a story about queer love and motherhood, was described by the judges as a “very intense, poetic, sensual book about all kinds of appetites”.

Vigdis Hjorth’s Norwegian novel about a mother and child Is Mother Dead is translated by Charlotte Barslund. Susie Mesure in the Guardian said the novel was: “an absorbing study of inner turmoil that is unexpectedly gripping”. No emotion is more indulgent than feeling that you are intensely human. Though it can also be the most tyrannical. You are responsible for every word, and no statement is innocent.”

Boulder by Eva Baltasar | Book review | The TLS

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. Still, at novella’s end, I felt a pang. And today, I find myself missing the anticipation of charge, of aggression, of violence and beauty. This author has published ten volumes of poetry, so that’s where I’ll head next. A poem a day feels like it’ll be plenty. This is a tender, unflinchingly honest examination of a woman’s desires as she grapples with the challenges and obligations of partnership and motherhood, juxtaposed against her longing for personal freedom. It’s clear that Baltasar is first and foremost a poet – every sentence is fluid and beautifully crafted (and impressively translated by Julia Sanches), to create a gorgeously sensuous and evocative reading experience.’ Nichole Gadras, Mr Bs While immersing myself into Boulder’s world, I realized that the prose was full of metaphors, similes and other figures of speech - usually I find this kind of writing quite underwhelming. Yet, after getting to know the narrator slightly better, I felt it wasn’t completely incongruous with her peculiar and detached, but deeply poetic worldview. Boulder’s raw vocabulary is her second nature, there is something addictive about her voice. An abundant marine imagery with its sea, ships and sailors hints at the bigger picture which is to take place in this novel. Lluís-Anton Baulenas guanya el Ciutat d'Alzira amb una novel·la entre la ironia i la crítica social". VilaWeb . Retrieved February 3, 2019.

MadameTeste

Boulder is longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Award. You can read further about the longlist of 13 books here. The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday, April 18. The winning title will be announced on Tuesday, May 23, 2023. Boulder is Julia Sanches’s translation of Eva Baltasar’s Catalan original of the same name, and the second in a triptych (rather than a trilogy) of novels, the third part of which Mamut was published in 2022 in the original and presumably will be out in English in 2023-. The announcement of the shortlist follows research by Nielsen for the Booker Prize Foundation that shows the biggest group of translated fiction readers in the UK is made up of 25 to 34-year-olds, compared with 60 to 84-year-olds for fiction as a whole.