Boulder: Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

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Perhaps the aspect I love about Baltasar so much is not only is the language beautiful but they are also an investigation of lived experience constantly aware as experienced through language. ‘ She uncovers with language,’ we read, Boulder and Samsa are ‘ loaning each other language,’ by learning each other’s native language and, as Boulder tells us ‘ language stakes us when we are born and shapes us, governs our cells…builds us as people and sometimes we are not aware of it.’ This is an extension on the narrative style of being so enclosed in Boulder’s perspective on events as it allows her to shape herself through her language of telling as well as shape the events in a way that she can process them. It is a reclaiming of self after having been reshaped externally, most notably by her relationship with Tinna: 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”.

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.⁣ Conoce a Samsa, una mujer escandinava que la enamora, se sienten bien juntas, empiezan una relación más o menos estable, se ven cada vez que el barco vuelve a puerto. Un día Samsa le dice que se va, que vuelve a su país, a Noruega. Ella lo deja todo atrás y la sigue, se adapta a todo por amor, pero se siente bien. Después de años de convivencia Samsa decide ser madre y empieza el proceso. Ella se siente fuera de lugar, se siente excluida, más aún cuando nace la niña; la relación que se establece entre madre e hija es tan fuerte e interdependiente que no hay lugar para ella... Debe replantearse su vida y su relación...Boulder 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. 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. Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated from Ivoirian by Frank Wynne, is about two generations of Ivoirians trying to make their way as undocumented workers in Paris. Reviewing the book in the Guardian, John Self described it as “inventive and very funny”. Permafrost by Eva Baltasar is one of the revelatory books of this season . . . I had never read a book in Catalan about sex, seen from the perspective of a woman, such as Permafrost.’ Jordi Benavente 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.’

Boulder by Eva Baltasar - Publishers Weekly Boulder by Eva Baltasar - Publishers Weekly

Después de la exitosa Permafrost, Boulderes la continuación del tríptico donde Eva Baltasar explora la voz, la vida y el cuerpo de tres mujeres.

Reviews

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. ’ Ramon Pardina, guardonat amb el premi Joaquim Ruyra de Blanes - Núria Astorch - Blanes". El Punt Avui . Retrieved February 3, 2019. Much of the novel is concerned with the relationship between Samsa and Boulder, and the changes that ensue when Samsa decides she would like a child. ‘She looks at me with those blue eyes that fade to gray in the warm apartment light, and I have the feeling she has everything, that she is one and whole, like a god. That, somehow, her desire for a child spoils her.’ With Boulder ambivalent towards children and parenting, Baltasar has written a subversion of motherhood – something we don’t often see depicted in literature or art. Does this feel like an accurate portrayal? If so, why do we not see more of this point of view?

Eva Baltasar: Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize Eva Baltasar: Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize

This year’s 13-strong longlist contains three languages – Bulgarian, Catalan and Tamil – that have never appeared before. In total, the list comprises 11 languages with three writers – GauZ’, Zou Jingzhi and Amanda Svensson – whose work has appeared in English for the first time. For 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).Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov, who writes fiction in Russian, is shortlisted for Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv, out at the end of April, translated by Reuben Woolley. Meanwhile Perumal Murugan, who declared himself “dead” as a writer after protests against his work, is longlisted for Pyre, translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. Narrated by a young woman who’s fixed on suicide, past loves, family, and everything in between. Trying to find her way in life, our protagonist moves to Scotland where she becomes an au pair, reads all day, and starts to hate the colour green. Next, she tries her hand at teaching Spanish to businesspeople in Brussels and has a love affair with her client that she must put a stop to once marriage is proposed. I've never read anything like this. Permafrost is sharp, poetic, philosophical, and raw, with many fleeting moments. Eva Baltasar breathes a memorable and discerning character to life!’ Eva Baltasar's Permafrost, translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanches, is a mordant novel that takes the demands of the body seriously. Sex, death, piss, and illness run throughout this unrepentant monologue, all pointing to a truth of our condition that many polite writers steer safely clear of, but one that tells us just what it is to be a human in an ill-fitting world.' Anna Claire Weber The judges said Standing Heavy, about two generations of Ivoirians trying to make their way as undocumented workers in Paris, “is the story of colonialism and consumerism, of the specifics of power, and of the hope of the 60s diminishing as society turns cynical and corrupt”.