What the symptoms say

BOOK REVIEW

WHAT THE SYMPTOMS SAY

Author: Bárbara Blasco From the reader report by: Suky Taylor

The text flows between the narrator’s thoughts, literary and scientific references, and insights into her past, to deal with profound themes including illness, life and death, family, motherhood and loneliness, and what does or might make happiness. But from the narrator’s bitter reflections come sympathy and understanding, and then hope as she meets a new man on the ward and discovers an unexpected connection with him.

The narrative reads as a sort of stream of consciousness, and is both engaging as it makes the reader feel complicit, and challenging for its unreliability. Blasco writes with intelligence and a dry humour, approaching her themes with a great deal of irony and frankness that has been described as acidic by more than one reviewer.

The universal themes of the book also suggest that this would be as accessible to an Englishspeaking readership as to a Spanish-speaking one, and would be successful in a foreign market. It deals with very contemporary issues, and would fit the demand for contemplative, self-explorative but not self-indulgent literature that is popular in today’s climate, and which promotes a nonjudgmental, open-minded approach to personal relationships.

PUBLISHED IN NEW SPANISH BOOKS UK

TUSQUETS EDITORES

Title WHAT THE SYMPTOMS SAY DICEN LOS SÍNTOMAS

Author Bárbara Blasco Genre Literature Pages 272

ISBN 978-84906-687-02 Year of publication 2020 Number of editions 2 Language Spanish Spanish retail price 18.00 €

Author’s biography: Bárbara Blasco (Valencia, 1972) has worked as a shop assistant, telephone operator, waiter, magician’s assistant, cabaret dancer, petrol station staff, supporting actor and selling encyclopaedias, before she completed her studies in journalism. She then studied cinematography at the Catalonia Centre of Cinematographic Studies, and scriptwriting for cinema at the School of Cinema in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. She wrote the novels Luck (2013) and The Memory of Wire (2018), and currently makes regular contributions to the newspaper Valencia Plaza and teaches at the Fuentetaja Creative Writing Workshops. What The Symptoms Say is an original and frank piece of writing, an excellent portrait of a woman in crisis.

Synopsis: Although Virginia never had a good relationship with her father, she feels duty-bound to visit him every day at the clinic where he lies in a coma. She is a woman obsessed with illness, and symptoms reveal more to her than words. In the hospital room the bonds Virginia has with her mother and her sister are put to the test at a critical period in her life, when the question of motherhood is starting to become urgent. Then a new patient, a mysterious and not unattractive man, appears in the next bed, and little by little, he and Virginia build a complicity that escapes from the hospital sterile hospital ward to their own private place. Where, perhaps, when everything seems lost, something unexpected and authentic can grow. An original and frank piece of writing, an excellent portrait of a woman in crisis.

Publisher: Tusquets Editores Founded in 1969, Tusquets Editores publishes literary fiction, essays, poetry, history, biography and popular science, as well as representing most of its Spanish-language authors internationally.

Publishing rights available from: Tusquets Editores - CIF A08452021 Av. Diagonal 662-664, Barcelona, Barcelona www.tusquetseditores.com Contact: Alejandra Segrelles [asegrelles@tusquets-editores.es] Phone: (+34) 932 530 400