Following the trail of Sarah lark, that great writer living in Spain, the writer Karen Viggers has also found her favorite settings in our antipodes to present her novels to us.
For a European reader there is always a mixture of exoticism and curiosity around a story told from the other side of the world. This time we traveled to the island of Bruny, in Tasmania, to meet Mary, an elderly woman who faces that lottery of the last dawns, where each new day is a new ticket to leave this world.
In principle, this novel is limited to that labeling tendency of "female narrative" that does a disservice to literature in general. Why is narrative in feminine? Because of its sensitivity? Why are you going to talk to us about love? I already thought about it in another entry about the novel An imperfect familyby Pepa Roma. That commercial idea of literature only for women just doesn't seem right to me ...
Mary, the woman, gives us the dizzying view of her past. She was a dedicated woman, devoted to the land as the lighthouse keeper's wife who could never abandon her momentous role as a guide for ships at night.
In the opening moment of the novel, after so many years behind her back and with a few days on the horizon, Mary only looks for that natural tranquility that body and mind ask for when the natural exhaustion of every cell leads towards that serene decline.
But sometimes, despite the feeling of last things, there may be issues to settle ...
Mary was not planning to return to the island of Bruny, where that lighthouse stood between the green of the meadow and the blue of the sea. But a letter ends up precipitating his return.
Returning to that island that was his entire home awakens the natural contradictory sensations of the impossible return to the places where he left happily. But also on that island Mary knew how to bury her secrets that now seem to have surfaced and that, in the end, may be the best way to close the vital balance in the most dignified and surprising way.
You can now buy the novel La isla de la memoria, the new book by Karen Viggers, with a discount for accesses from this blog, here: