Autumn is a season that invites you to read. After the busy social life of the summer and the lethargy caused by the high temperatures, the readers find autumn an ideal time to immerse ourselves in more intimate and melancholic readings. And yes, also the publishers at this time return to their usual routine and with them the literary news.
Navigating the publishers' catalogs, We have gathered five literary novelties in which its characters, for different reasons, live a period of loneliness. Readings that we believe are very appropriate for this time of year and that have been or will be published throughout this month of September.
Deception Island
- Author: Pauline Flowers
- Publisher: Seix Barral
After quitting a job you hate, Marcela flees from her life in Santiago de Chile to visit her father in Punta Arenas, in Patagonia. There he discovers that Miguel, with whom he has a complex relationship, is hiding a young Korean man who has been rescued by a group of fishermen at sea. Isolated behind a wall of silence and a traumatic story, Lee is a mystery to unravel, a survivor in which they both turn to avoid resolving their own differences.
Inspired by real cases of oriental sailors who put their lives in danger by jumping from the factory ships that sail through the Strait of Magellan, Deception Island tells the story of three fugitives looking for a refuge not to give up. Addressing the current state of exploitation of the seas and unthinkable working conditions in the XXI century, the novel crosses the frontier of reality to arrive at a new shore, one in which loneliness, mistakes and despair can still become an adventure.
Written with a cinematic beat Heir to Korean cinema, as poetic as it is violent, Isla Decepción is the long-awaited first novel by Paulina Flores, winner of the Roberto Bolaño Prize, chosen by Granta as one of the best narrators in Spanish and whose first book, Qué shame, has been unanimously praised by critics and translated internationally.
Fall Quartet
- Author: Barbara pym
- Publisher: Gatopardo ediciones
Barbara Pym wrote Autumn Quartet without much hope that it would see the light of day. It had not been published for a long time, considering its editors that it had been anchored in a moth-eaten and little commercial custom. After the poet Philip Larkin and the critic Lord David Cecil claimed their worth, Pym found a publisher for this book, which turned out to be Booker Prize finalist in 1977 and enshrined her as one of the most widely read and beloved English authors of the XNUMXth century.
The protagonists of this novel work in the same office and they face the autumn of their life mired in solitude. Letty is going to retire without having found love. Marcia has an eccentric and surly character, qualities that have been accentuated since she had a mastectomy. Edwin is a widower obsessed with attending religious ceremonies, and Norman a misanthrope very given to sarcasm. They all live suspended between their memories of the war, a present they do not understand - the London of rock and roll and the miniskirt - and a gloomy future. All persist, however, in finding hope in a society that turns its back on them or takes pity on them.
Sola
- Author: Charlotte Gurt
- Publisher: Asteroid Books
- Publication date: 13/09/2021
Mei, a forty-two-year-old woman Immersed in an apathetic marriage and who has just been fired from her job, she decides to take refuge in the house where she grew up, a small farmhouse in the middle of the forest. There she will try to write the novel that has haunted her for years while facing her past, an inopportune present and a future adrift.
This novel is the chronicle of a rebellion, the story of an unrepentant loneliness narrated in an intriguing 185-day countdown. What is loneliness? An objective reality or a state of mind, a blessing or a condemnation? The only sure thing is that you never get out of solitude unscathed.
A woman and two cats
- Author: Ayanta barilli
- Publisher: Editorial Planeta
- Publication date: 22/09/2021
The protagonist, a transcript of the author herself, recounts and recounts a period of loneliness, marked by a sentimental breakup and the departure of her children, each one to a destination they cannot visit.
During these months, accompanied only by her two cats, writing will become the only act of resistance possible in the face of adversity. It will review the key moments of its existence, seen from an obligatory different perspective, in which a woman - who is also a daughter, mother and lover - will become a liar.
Disobedience will be the light that will illuminate your path.
Soledad
- Author Victor Català
- Publisher: Trotalibros
- Publication date: 29/09/2021
"His loneliness thickened and froze around his soul like a polar gleba."
Mila, recently married to Matias, a man he hardly knows leaves his home to follow him to a remote hermitage perched on a rugged mountain. Upon arrival, he will meet Gaietà, a mature, smiling and wise shepherd, and Ánima, a sinister poacher. That rugged loneliness and the beings that inhabit it lead Mila to undertake an inner journey with no return.
Loneliness, masterpiece of Catalan letters, published at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, it continues to be overwhelmingly valid in both content and form. Hence the need for this translation, where the poet and translator Nicole d'Amonville Alegría scrupulously translates into Spanish the extreme richness, condensation and poetry always present in Caterina Albert's prose.
Obviously we have not read any of these literary novelties although we have, especially, two of them in our roads. What about you? Which of these literary novelties catches your attention the most? Do you like to read stories like these or do you prefer mystery readings or other lighter and cooler?