How to build the tools to escape from the village

A little overshadowed by the enormous Carson McCullers and those teenage girl characters who wander through dusty towns full of criminal secrets while on the cusp of adulthood, Siri HustvedtFor her second novel, so far unpublished in Catalan, she created a nineteen-year-old Lily Dahl and placed her in a town in Minnesota (which couldn't have been very different from her own) where she serves coffee in the money that lies beneath her house as she observes the behavior of the regular customers. She's an aspiring actress, dreams of running away to the big city and making it big, but her reality is making scrambled eggs for Franck and Dick, a pair of brothers who are farmers and barely speak, or some bacon for Martin Petersen, a former childhood playmate who has become an ex-con. She has a neighbor who is a retired actress who helps her prepare for a role in a local production of A Midsummer Night's Dream And, above all, a tenant in the hotel across the street named Ed Shapiro, who is famous and incredibly handsome. At night, Lily secretly watches him paint, driven by his creative fever, and the erotic game soon begins.

When supernatural visions begin to manifest, and when (it seems there's another murder), no one escapes the circle of suspects: not the neighbor who writes her memoirs on an old typewriter, nor the cosmopolitan painter, nor the cosmopolitan Martin, nor Martin. The book becomes a good thriller Led by a determined Lily Dahl, who will stop at nothing to uncover the secrets hidden beneath the dust, even if it means hurting more than one person and, above all, discovering things about herself that will forever transform her into an adult. The novel is a reflection on this rite of passage, which is always painful but brings greater self-knowledge and a broader perspective, equipping those who undergo it with tools to navigate life. However, the novel as a whole lacks a certain rhythm and has too many characters, who constantly come and go and engage in somewhat clichéd conversations.

It's not always a good idea to revisit older novels by established authors. Siri Hustvedt, who is now a highly recognized voice in the field of art essays and psychology, and who has written memorable autobiographical books, such as the The Story of My Nerves, has a career as a novelist that, although it boasts a great degree –What I loved– it also has some obstacles along the way. Lily Dahl's Spell It's by no means a masterpiece, but it does have some of the weaknesses of her early novels. It's not a major flaw, because it reads well, is impeccably translated by Ferran Ràfols Gesa, and could be suitable for young readers—not everyone needs to be engrossed in stories about witch schools—but it doesn't leave the usual aftertaste of a Siri Hustvedt book, which always has that distinctive perspective.