Laia Marull recommends a novel that "pierces your soul."

BarcelonaIt's a summer of new films for Laia Marull, who has had films on the bill for a few weeks now. Laura Mañá's comedy The irresponsible ones and on September 5th the rural drama will premiere The black earth, by Alberto Morais. Between promotions, the Barcelona actress devours The impossible goodbyes (La Magrana, translated by Héctor Bofill and Hye Young Yu), the novel by South Korean Nobel Prize winner Han Kang about a woman who must go to a friend's house to take care of her bird while she is in the hospital. The house is on Jeju Island, where the protagonist discovers the traumatic past of her friend's family, which is also South Korea's: a massacre in which more than ten thousand people were killed. "The truth is that it is not a book for the summer, but more for the winter," says Marull. "I haven't finished it yet, but I am fascinated. It is a novel that pricks your soul from the first moment, and I am enjoying it very much."

What the actress likes most aboutThe impossible goodbyes is that, "through images of dreams, thoughts, and going up and down in time, it draws a very powerful relationship between two friends," with a narrative that "doesn't let you breathe, but always from a very intimate place." For Marull, the essence of the novel is precisely the friendship that underpins it, that of two women who "must help each other at a very important moment in their lives." Throughout the novel, the actress continues, the reader discovers "the ancestors of the characters" and, through them, "the past of a country that will make us reflect on historical memory." Ultimately, she adds, the work "is a hymn to friendship and the importance of historical memory."