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The waiting place
BOOK REVIEW
THE WAITING PLACE
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Author: Sònia Hernández From the reader report by: Eric Reyes Roher
By writing in the first-person plural, with the use of a delicate “us” that creates a collective by aggregating individuals, the narrator of this novel adopts the voice of a generation of children born at the time of the Spanish transition to democracy. Today they are forty-somethings, their enthusiasm for democracy is waning and they are confronted with the inertia of their withered desires. They seem to want to blame others for this: their parents, the State, capitalism, etc.
The very great talent of Sonia Hernández lies in her ability to understand the constitutive apprehension of her generation, seeking to generate some form of “impact”, however mediocre and banal they are, like everyone else; to reproduce the mechanical discourse which falls into aporia and immobilism, going round and round in circles like a Beckettian nightmare. El lugar de la espera is the biting and witty biopsy of an indignant and noisy Spanish society, “seeking to win time or to waste it,” indecisive because they have nothing to decide.
PUBLISHED IN NEW SPANISH BOOKS FR
ACANTILADO
Title THE WAITING PLACE El lugar de la espera
Author Sònia Hernández Genre Literature Pages 176
ISBN 978-84-17346-75-1 Year of publication 2019 Number of editions 1 Language Spanish Spanish retail price 16.00 €
Author’s biography: Sònia Hernández (Terrassa, Barcelona, 1976) is a doctor in Hispanic Philology, a journalist, writer and cultural manager. She has published several collections of poems including The house by the sea (La casa del mar, 2006), The names of time (Los nombres del tiempo, 2010), The quietness of metal (La quietud de metal, 2018) and Completely unfinished (Del tot inacabat, 2018). She is the author of the short story books The wrongly sick (Los enfermos erróneos, 2008) and The propagation of silence (La propagación del silencio, 2013) and the novels Rapallo’s wife (La mujer de Rapallo, 2010), The Pissimboni (Los Pissimboni, 2015), The man who believed he was Vicente Rojo (El hombre que se creía Vicente Rojo, 2017) and The waiting place (El lugar de la espera, 2019). http://www.acantilado.es/persona/sonia-hernandez
Synopsis: “Democracy and the Constitution, which were born almost at the same time as we were, told us that everyone had the right to be whatever they wanted to be. All of society agreed and came together to preserve our hopes and dreams. We were going to be whatever we wanted to be. That’s why they constantly asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up.” Told by multiple narrators in the first-person plural, the characters share more than the voice that speaks for them all: they live in the same symbolic space, that of a generation that is no longer lost but is missing, waiting for a signal that will tell them when it’s the right time to carry out the work, or make the decision, that will give meaning to their lives.
Publisher: Acantilado Acantilado is an independent publishing house founded in 1999 by J. Vallcorba. In 2008 Sandra Ollo joined the imprint, holding the positions of editor and manager until 2014, when she became the director.
Publishing rights available from: Acantilado (Quaderns Crema S.A). - A58525502 Muntaner 462, Barcelona www.acantilado.es/catalogo/el-lugar-de-la-espera/ Contact: Elena Barrio [rights2@acantilado.es] Phone: (+34) 934 144 906
Prizes and reviews: “A fascinating story, full of sensitivity, creative impulses, enigmas and doubts. It shouldn’t go unnoticed.” Pilar Castro, El Cultural.
