La writer Cristina Lopez Barrio He went from youth narrative to adult narrative, a natural process that, however, becomes more difficult in the opposite direction. Few adult narrative writers could move on to youth literature, reconnecting with the world and the emotions of young people is not an easy task when they already have the vices and habits of writing without due sensitivity.
That is why I have always considered that the author who cuts his teeth telling stories for young people will always have a greater range of resources when moving towards adult novels in any of their genres. A dialogue from an adult novel in which a couple of young people intervene will always be easier for the writer who has a good understanding of how young people can express themselves and even feel.
Point in favor then for Cristina, who, in addition, already demonstrated her ingenuity even with the title for her first youth novel: The man who got dizzy with the rotation of the Earth. A 10 as a title for that humorous hyperbole of our world as something new. , amazing.
After that novel came several more, already focused on narratives for older audiences. And with the baggage of youth incorporated into her creative heritage, she soon began to stand out, giving special prominence to the figure of women.
3 recommended novels by Cristina López Barrio
Fog in Tangier
It is fair to recognize, controversies aside, that when a novel becomes a finalist for the Planeta award, it must have quality. and stay behind Javier Sierra, one of the top in our country, tastes almost like a first prize. The novel itself I recently reviewed.
Summary: This lawyer and writer convinced the jury with a mystery and love novel, a kind of allegory about the search for identity and happiness, and the adventure that this can entail.
The fog hovering over Tangier as a metaphor for the mystery that surrounds the search for the protagonist of this novel. But this novel is also an act of liberation from the traditional female figure.
A housewife enjoying a fleeting affair and surrendered to mystery as a vital plan in which to lose herself and find herself again in the streets of an unknown city where dangers can lurk as she undertakes the momentous journey of that stage of her life , marked by the desire for adventure, passion and feelings of freedom and youth ...
Heaven fits into hell
A shocking historical fiction set in the most intense years of the Spanish Inquisition. A singular process against a witch capable of healing or getting sick with the simple laying on of hands.
The blindness of the Church and its desire for power through fear, obtuse in the minds of a people still given over to obscurantism and pseudo-religious superstitions disguised as Catholicism. Women as the focus of fear, hatred and contempt.
Summary: Toledo, 1625. A woman is imprisoned in the secret jail of the Court of the Holy Inquisition, accused of witchcraft. Several people claim that it causes illnesses and misfortunes with the mere imposition of their bare hands. Is she a witch or a saint? Or maybe just a phony?
The main witness is Berenjena, a laundress from the Hospicio de la Santa Soledad de la Villa de Madrid. Her story goes back to the day the defendant, then a defenseless baby, arrived at the hospice wrapped in a blue shawl with strange embroidery.
He had such a high fever that he immediately feared for his life. Those were dark times when the Black Death sowed terror. Eggplant wanted to investigate the girl's mysterious origin but, as she got closer to the truth, the more dangerous her investigation was, and several people related to her birth turned up dead ... Revelations about her past will decide the verdict that will seal her fate.
The world clock
Cultivating the story, getting a volume governed by thematic analogy of any kind is a complicated task for demanding readers who may discover that the whole does not fit at all. But this is not the case.
A magical realism, almost dreamlike and sometimes sinister, links the stories that are like distant lives that without touching find a common space, as if some characters were influenced by others with whom they share a role but who know nothing, as without the same clock will synchronize their lives from the top of the wall of their lives ...
Summary: Without losing the taste for metaphor, magical realism and exuberant writing, Cristina López Barrio presents six very different stories.
En The world clock, a young man begins a long journey in search of the secret of eternity; on Hand, a police inspector establishes a strange relationship with the death victim he is investigating; Letter to a bureaucrat it tells of the radical change of a town before the construction of a highway; Legends it is a love story beyond the borders of time and death; A murderer and a collector have an uncertain encounter in an elevator in Do not repeat life or weapons, and War recounts the descent into madness of a convict who escapes from jail.
