this was hard for me. there were parts that weren't, and that i enjoyed, but overall it was a quick but rough read. rough as in i couldn't get a hold of the narrator and felt like what i was learning about her was often inconsistent with what i thought i already knew. rough as in i couldn't relate at all and so was searching for something to keep me drawn in. there were definitely moments but that almost was worse because i kept getting tugged in just a bit, and then spit back out. there are definitely a number of bright spots here, though, even as the whole didn't work for me. (i say for me, i think i was just the wrong audience for this.)

my favorite part was the translator's note. i've read translations by her before and i love her engagement with the text and how she shows us what she's thinking as she's making her choices. she raises a question that interested me more than the book itself, actually, in talking about how language changes and how translations make the original more complete, and so if it's really possible to understand a book when you only read it in one language. she is such an interesting person, from what her translator's notes show of her.

"Self-medication is a permanent temporary solution, like the low-watt bulb hanging the hall. Twenty years with a dimly lit hall - how little it takes to become used to seeing so little."

from julia sanches' translator's note: "I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of the original text as a fraction of a whole. Picture a sphere. Picture the moon, even. When the reader directs their attention to a text as it exists in a single language, they are seeing only one face(t) of it, much like we only ever see one side of the moon from our singular viewpoint. The rest exists behind it, in darkness. Perhaps we can only participate in the full potential of any literary text once we have read it in every language and across all time. Maybe it's not translation that is impossible but rather a compete understanding of any piece of literature." ( )

Novela que, con todos los ingredientes para ser un puro drama nihilista, consigue en muchos momentos hacerte sonreír. La protagonista logra causar empatía a pesar de ser una especie de Holden Caufield convertido en una mujer lesbiana, con la adolescencia completamente superada, y situado en la actualidad.
No conocemos su nombre, pero sí todo lo que pasa por su cabeza y mucho de sus relaciones con sus padres, su hermana y sus amantes. Coquetea con la muerte como una solución a la completa falta de comprensión con la vida y con la forma en la que los demás, mucho más felices que ella, o eso dicen, consiguen soportarla.
Lo mejor de todo, creo, a pesar de ser una buena historia, su forma de contarla. Seguramente su oficio de poeta tendrá mucho que ver en el asunto. Y de hecho su dedicatoria, “A la poesía, por permitirlo”, me hace suponer que la propia autora también lo piensa.
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Premi Llibreter 2018 El comences i no el pots deixar.Una noia adolescent/adulta amb grans dubtes suïcides i de futur. Hi ha relats molt intensos referents a la sexualitat lèsbica ( )