A delicacy that discerning readers shouldn't miss.

Bernat and Bárbara, the two protagonists of this story, often ask themselves: what are we doing in this world? And they don't have the answer, although they have learned to live their lives turning their backs on the barbarity of our time, covering their ears amidst the unpleasant and deafening noise of the world, blindfolding themselves to the pervasive ugliness of so many things (and so many souls, to put it bluntly, especially if you don't stray far from the lands bathed by the Mediterranean (the "tired landscape," as they call it). They recently retired, and they have known each other since they were seventeen. In other words, they have spent their whole lives together, and, as they have grown older, they have increasingly embraced that way of life described by the philosopher Josep Maria Esquirol. defined it as intimate resistanceThe resilient couple barely use screens. Decades ago, they found their paradise on Earth in a little-known—and uncrowded—department in neighboring France, in the heart of Occitanie: Corrèsa. Since then, they have returned several times, because they both love excursions with profound repercussions and, conversely, detest trips designed for thrills. Now retired, they have tried to live, because they feel "withdrawal is the only way out." However, the project will not quite come to fruition.

In 2013 Roger Vilà Padró published Margins (Barcino), an excellent novel that already foreshadowed some of the themes developed in the current one. In that novel, a forty-year-old man returned to the Priory of his family roots to make a substantial change in his life. HortonedaThere are some characters who come from that book, but above all, we find once again, firmly established, the idea of ​​the margins, which has to do with the task of distancing oneself from the dizzying center, from the noise of a civilization that, in so many respects, seems to be definitively heading towards its demise. We could even reclaim for this new title the neologism that already appeared in that first one: to become involvedThat is, to live in a place that is not too damaging to one's conscience. Like the protagonist of MarginsThose in the story I present also aspire to escape, to embark on senseless journeys, to borrow half the title of a book by Vassili Golovanov, cited in these pages. "I know nothing. I am nothing," Bernat begins, whose voice we will hear even after his death. And both he and Bárbara know for certain that they are irretrievably alone. They both combat this certainty with a shared, seamless life project. Their worldviews are very similar, although their ways of being differ.

The Moral Life of a Couple

A Mesell reader might find that, over the course of 170 pages, very little actually happens. On the contrary, the moral life of a couple unfolds with great complexity. Both of them aspire to write, to confront the shared dissatisfaction of being inhabitants of this planet by creating beautiful and enduring texts, even though they know full well—old cats that they are—that any ambition for permanence is fleeting. They feel like "ripe fruit hanging from the branch, about to fall at any moment," but they have grown wise and grasp each other with absolute clarity. They tasted, very young, the poison of asking questions. What are we doing in this world?

The style is magnificent, of sustained beauty, without any stridency. The voices of Bernat and Bárbara are subtly interwoven (and, as I said, also his voice after his death), and the reader never loses their bearings, always knows where they are. In fact, it's as if the voices are passing the torch, just as Bernat—the first to leave—will yield to Bárbara—who won't be long in following him. It's a Camusian novel: the moral question is its foundation. What is the meaning of all this? What are we doing here? Does this world invite anything other than the desire for disappearance? I won't claim it's a blessed rarity in the current Catalan literary landscape, but it is a delicacy that discerning readers shouldn't miss.