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Boulder: Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

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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. But her desire for companionship remains and on one onshore visit in Chaitén she meets Samsa, a Scandinavian geologist who makes her living from a multinational with blood on its hands.. The two begin an itinerant relationship whenever their respective schedules coincide and Samsa christens her Boulder as per the opening quote. But then after many months Samsa announces she has accepted a new job in Reykjavik and asks Boulder to move there with her, who accepts.

Boulder by Eva Baltasar, Julia Sanches | Waterstones

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.” Este segundo libro de Eva Baltasar, dedicado a las mujeres, cuyas protagonista es lesbiana como en Permafrost -el primero de la serie-, se tratan las relaciones de pareja y la maternidad. Reading Eva Baltasar's Permafrost is like having a rug continuously pulled out from under you until finally the rug disappears. How can a novel that orbits suicide be so surprising, so intensely liberating and funny, and at the same time, so full of grief? That is its genius. Catherine Lacey 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 compagneLand: “I’d dug into the island with my nails and learned that the pulp of your fingers can harden” (7). Baltasar describes how you didn't think it could be done. It surpasses everything. One of the best books of the year’

Boulder by Eva Baltasar | Book review | The TLS

Holding Tinna like this makes me feel strange and new. It makes me think of all the words that have grown over me like hedges or weeds. Among them, one that's harder and older than any other in the world: mother.’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.’

Eva Baltasar: ‘Boulder’, candidata al Premi Booker Eva Baltasar: ‘Boulder’, candidata al Premi Booker

Even from the beginning of the novel Boulder has a clear opinion about children: “I’m not into kids. I find them annoying. They’re unpredictable variables that come crashing into my coastal shelf with the gale force of their natural madness. They’re craggy, out of control, scattered. They’re drawn to me the same way cats zero in on people who are allergic to them.” The novel is written entirely in the first person and is made up of short sections, yet also lengthy monologues. Did this point of view and style enhance your connection with or understanding of the protagonist?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

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