"Boulder" by Eva Baltasar

 Astonishing prose.

A cook on a cargo ship in South America falls in love with a Scandinavian; they begin a lesbian relationship, move to Iceland, settle down in a house and have a daughter. But can a free spirit be tied down in domesticity?

Astonishing prose. Or is it poetry? This author (and translator, Julia Sanches) makes magic out of words. Don't read this for the plot though it is strong but simple. Do not read this for the characters though both the major characters, the unnamed narrator-protagonist and her partner-antagonist are true to life, springing from the page in all their complicated three-dimensionality. Don't read it for the insights that it offers into life, though these are well-observed and original. Read it for the wonder of the words.

Selected quotes (to show you what I mean): 

• "A night years ago. Sometime after ten. No sky, no vegetation, no ocean. Only the wind, the hand that grabs at everything." (Ch 1)
• "The cold feels peculiar. It's possible I've drunk some of it myself, since I can feel it thrashing and bucking under my skin, and also deeper inside, in the arches between each organ." (Ch 1)
• "Stained teeth bared in greeting." (Ch 1)
• "Water, earth, lungs. The perfect conditions for silence." (Ch 1)
• "Food comes to us wrapped in skin, and to prepare it you need a knife." (Ch 1)
• "The islanders rise. They look like enormous turtles hatched from a large egg. They plod through the rain, and as the pass me I feel like an insignificant foreigner, disease-white and sopping wet under my dark blue rain jacket. You'd need two of me to make one body as tough as theirs." (Ch 1)
• "I don't fuck her, I whet myself on her. I drink her like I'd been raised wandering the desert. I swallow her as if she were a sword, little by little and with enormous care. The hours layer over one another, blanketing us." (Ch 1)
• "These new, single-family homes have ravenous souls that feed off your own little human soul - sucking dry your freedom, your independence, and all trace of your passion." (Ch 2)
• "The house gathers itself up and looms over you. It unhinges its jaw like those terrifying snakes that bleed the milk from sleeping mothers then curl up like necklaces against their skin." (Ch 2) A foreshadowing of motherhood?
• "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." (Ch 2)
• "The truth is we'd never made any plans, we'd just taken huge bites out of life." (Ch 2)
• "The sofa is a place for sitting and talking, a sensible piece of furniture designed to promote verticality and position the head as the sovereign supreme of all the subordinate organs, including the heart." (Ch 2)
• "The hormones are doing their job, they season and marinate her body, manipulating it to cater to the baby's taste and satisfaction." (Ch 2)
• "Time has set its sights on us and slowly worn us down, sharpening its teeth on our bodies." (Ch 2)
• "If you could only set fire to every word that evokes an illness." (Ch 3)
• "I'm sick of the extrasensory powers that biology confers upon its devotees." (Ch 4)
• "Personality is a dress made of scraps that I never stop washing or mending; it clothes me, might even suit me, but it will never, ever define me. The nakedness I conceal is what makes me a person." (Ch 5)

Boulder won an English Pen Translates award in  2021. It was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023. 

February 2024; 105 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God