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A review by kentanapages
Permafrost by Eva Baltasar
5.0
Permafrost reads like a poetic memoir crossed with a darkly humored observational on humans and society and living.
The translation by Julia Sanches is art in itself; I actually just ordered this in the Spanish translation to compare (I can not read Catalan to any useful degree), because I am so deeply drawn to the words and the feeling behind them. You can sense how lovingly this was translated.
I love the short chapters, which read like vignettes. I love the piercing sadness that fuels the wickedly funny humor, and the wry self awareness. This story revolves around thoughts of and partial attempts at suicide, yet somehow thrums with hope and made me feel a sense of connection to the narrator, to the author, to humanity.
The back cover says: “Permafrost’s no-bullshit lesbian narrator is an uninhibited lover and a wickedly funny observer of modern life… It is a breathtakingly forthright call for women’s freedom to embrace both pleasure and solitude, and speaks boldly of the body, of sex, and of the self.”
The author’s dedication says, ‘To poetry, for permitting it.’
I went to the bookstore to buy Boulder by Eva Baltasar, but they only had Permafrost, her debut novel, and technically the first in a trilogy (that apparently do not need to be read in order; after reading only the first, I can mostly confirm this).
I picked out the perfect color tab and am planning on going back through and tabbing all of my favorite quotes, of which there were many, this coming weekend.
I can’t wait to read Boulder, the next book in this loose trilogy, also translated by Julia Sanches. It was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and if it’s anything like Permafrost I’m going to love it.
The translation by Julia Sanches is art in itself; I actually just ordered this in the Spanish translation to compare (I can not read Catalan to any useful degree), because I am so deeply drawn to the words and the feeling behind them. You can sense how lovingly this was translated.
I love the short chapters, which read like vignettes. I love the piercing sadness that fuels the wickedly funny humor, and the wry self awareness. This story revolves around thoughts of and partial attempts at suicide, yet somehow thrums with hope and made me feel a sense of connection to the narrator, to the author, to humanity.
The back cover says: “Permafrost’s no-bullshit lesbian narrator is an uninhibited lover and a wickedly funny observer of modern life… It is a breathtakingly forthright call for women’s freedom to embrace both pleasure and solitude, and speaks boldly of the body, of sex, and of the self.”
The author’s dedication says, ‘To poetry, for permitting it.’
I went to the bookstore to buy Boulder by Eva Baltasar, but they only had Permafrost, her debut novel, and technically the first in a trilogy (that apparently do not need to be read in order; after reading only the first, I can mostly confirm this).
I picked out the perfect color tab and am planning on going back through and tabbing all of my favorite quotes, of which there were many, this coming weekend.
I can’t wait to read Boulder, the next book in this loose trilogy, also translated by Julia Sanches. It was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and if it’s anything like Permafrost I’m going to love it.