Clara Pastor: "If I find an injured bird on the ground, I can only do one thing"

BarcelonaA Greek island whose name we never learn is the idyllic setting where Erietta (Acantilado, 2026) unfolds, the debut as a novelist by Clara Pastor (Massachusetts, 1970) after having published two short story collections. The author, translator, and editor – she is the soul of the exquisite Elba since 2009 – explains the summer that Fiona, a middle-aged woman who has just divorced, spends in a rented house, trying to put her life back together. Among men who desire her and others who disappoint her, Fiona meets a solitary and wise woman who acts as a grandmother without being one and has a very particular relationship with her son.

She did not publish her first book, Los buenos vecinos (Acantilado, 2020), until she turned 50, even though she has edited dozens at the helm of Elba and other publishing houses.

— In reality, I am not an editor who, over the years, has ended up writing a book, but rather I have had the creative urge since I was very young. It is true that I did not start to systematize what I wrote until 2012. And the first thing I wrote were six short stories in English.

How is it?

— I was born in Massachusetts because my father [the economist Alfredo Pastor] was doing his doctorate there. Although we later returned to Barcelona, as we went back and forth I always studied at the American School, where they placed great importance on oral expression and creative writing. I still read mostly in English, even though the United States is a homeland that I see as increasingly distant.

In Barcelona she has built a career as an editor and translator, even though for the past four years she has been living in Menorca.

— I started at Quaderns Crema very early, at 20 years old, when I hadn't even finished my international relations degree. Jaume Vallcorba was left alone at the publishing house and was looking for someone. I was there for a while before returning to the United States to study comparative literature. When I returned to Barcelona, I joined Planeta. I went from a small and demanding place like Quaderns Crema to a large corporation, where I moved around, until in 2006 I worked with Gonzalo Pontón at Crítica and Ariel.

In 2009 he created Elba, a publishing house that has specialized in publishing essays related to art, travel books, and also gardens.

— Now publishing books about gardens has become a trend, and it's increasingly difficult for me to find titles that I can include in the catalog. Perhaps from Elba, although in a minority way, we helped pave the way in this field with Jardines: los verdaderos y los otros, by Umberto Pasti, and later with books by Marco Martella and Gilles Clément.

In 2012, he said that the books from his publishing house reached a thousand people.

— I would tell you that I wish I could achieve it with everyone. I really enjoy finding and editing books, but the commercial side of the editor's job interests me much less and I don't intend to learn it. In addition to my work at Elba, I am a literature professor at Esade, I translate – right now I am finishing The waves by Virginia Woolf for the Arpa publishing house– and I write short stories and novels.

What made you choose a Greek island to set Erietta in?

— I have been to Greece on several occasions, always by sea, and although the novel does not specify where the action takes place, I can give you some clues: it has to be one of the Ionian Islands, because they are very green, there are no ruins... And at a certain point, moreover, the cave of Ulysses is mentioned.

Fiona avoids the most touristy places on the island where she spends the summer. One of her favorite places is the cemetery, and she will visit what remains of an old psychiatric hospital.

— The psychiatric hospital is not part of what tourists see. It is an abandoned place, a vestige of a world that no longer exists. The islands have a tourist face and another different one: that of the people who live there, like Erietta and Aggeliki. What happens when, at the end of summer, the ferries become less frequent? Fiona does not end up staying in autumn, but she gets a different image of the island. In winter it must not be so different from the Menorca where I live.

Fiona is going through a life transition, between her recent separation from Claudio and a new chapter she has yet to experience.

— Fiona has separated from Claudio because they had stopped being interested in each other. It's a shame when that happens, but it's no one's fault. It happened to me too, with my second husband.

On the island, Fiona quickly meets two men: there's Paul, who after working in finance retrains and works as an artist and gallery owner...

— I see him as a fraud. I know the art world and I have invented this character from real conversations and images.

Besides Paul, there is Gilles, a man older than Fiona. He is very kind to her, but she avoids him.

— Sometimes you notice men who seem attractive and others who are more valuable pass you by and you don't even realize it. Gilles is kind and Fiona laughs when they are together. That's important. But there are men who arrive late to their own lives. Gilles could be an example of this. Some readers have told me that in the novel men come out badly, and I don't entirely agree: I do think they are secondary, because the protagonists are female.

What Fiona needs is not a new partner, but a friend. And she finds two: Erietta and Aggeliki.

— Erietta is an island within an island. She is an admirable character, but the decisions she has made have led her to live somewhat isolated. She has consciously built her own prison. Because she is so alone, she always seems ready to receive someone. I love Erietta very much: I have lived with her in my imagination since 2017, which was when it occurred to me and I wrote a first version of the novel in one go.

When she meets Erietta, Fiona says it's hard for her to "imagine her as a mother", but, on the other hand, as a grandmother it seems "possible" to her. Even so, she acts as the grandmother of a girl who is not her granddaughter.

— Aggeliki is 12 years old and is about to enter high school. She is the third vertex of the triangle she forms with Erietta and Fiona. They represent the three ages of a woman's life. When I was writing, I wasn't thinking about all this; I realized it when the book was already finished.

The day the three meet, Aggeliki is feeding a young owl she found in the garden. Animals are very present throughout the novel.

— When I published Los buenos vecinos, some readers told me that the stories were full of animals, and they were right. It also happens in the novel. I have always sought contact with nature. I have done so out of longing, out of admiration, and also because I feel a kinship with all kinds of creatures. If I find an injured bird on the ground, I can only do one thing.

Save it, like they do in the novel?

— Exactly. Even though I know it's very likely the animal will die.

In the book there is an impressive scene where an owl drags a wing on the ground and cries.

— This detail also comes from my own experience. Years ago I saw an owl dragging a wing on the ground, crying with a sound that is impossible to forget. I picked it up and took it to the vet. An injured animal impresses me as much as a creature.

Erietta says to Fiona: "Children are the only thing that can break your heart every day".

— As a mother myself, I would tell you that I think she is right. Fiona cannot know, because she has not had children.

Birds also have a metaphorical presence in the novel: Gilles says that he "would have always wanted to be a bird", but one day he realized that he had "become a tree". "A dry tree that continued to dream of having wings", he adds.

— Just like many people, Gilles is starting to realize that he is living a life that is not as he imagined. I have never been like this. Whenever I have thought it necessary, I have moved. I would not want my life to resemble what I do not want it to be. When I don't like something, I take flight. I am not afraid of change.