"Living through a great tragedy makes you feel different from others."

BarcelonaIf Ana and André hadn't wanted children and she hadn't gotten pregnant, if they hadn't moved to a new apartment and hadn't had Madalena and Miguel as neighbors, Mariana Salomão Carrara (São Paulo, 1986) wouldn't have found a novelist who could read the shocking novel in a novelist. The keen eye of the publishing house Les Hores and the skill of the book's translator, Pere Comellas, have made it possible for readers to discover If it weren't for the syllables of Saturday, a story that begins with the cracked head of André, Ana's husband, in the entrance to the apartment building where they lived. The man was the collateral victim of a neighbor's suicide: as André left the apartment, Miguel fell on him.

"A death this spectacular can be ridiculous or dramatic depending on how it's described," says the Brazilian author, who with this novel—the fifth of her career—won the 2023 São Paulo Prize and has had it translated into Catalan, Spanish, and Italian. "For Ana, the accident that ended her husband's life shattered her life," she continues. If it weren't for the syllables of Saturday explains her mourning and her attempt to look forward." As, as the author says, "living through a great tragedy makes you feel different from others," Ana will have to overcome a long emotional rough patch accompanied by her newborn daughter, Caterina. "very minimal," but allowing herself to be "totally imbued with the voice of her character." Here we witness Ana's interior monologue, which describes the exhaustion of her first motherhood with this cumulative precision. This is how she writes it in the book, saving some punctuation: "My whole house tired of the yellowish curtains that came out of the yellowish rods that came out of the rods in bags that were supposedly closed but that couldn't hold up the number of days it took me to be able to lower them, my own smell of regurgitated milk and sweat, my eyes wrinkled with wrinkles on my cheeks covered in allergy rashes." "In this passage of the novel, Francisca has arrived, the never-to-arrive Francisca, housework," explains the author. The cure will end up being worse than the disease. "Before the accident, she had been an architect," she recalls. "It's very difficult for her to resume her work obligations. It's very difficult for her to work with clients who ask her for projects, full of hope, and who sometimes suggest that she design rooms for their soon-to-be-born child."

The power of a good friendship

The key character who will help transform Ana's life is the one she initially considers her greatest enemy, Madalena. "I started writing this story thinking I wanted to build a long-term friendship between women," she says. "A good friendship is as important, if not more so, than a marriage; it's a genuine love that can help you build an unconventional family."

Mariana Salomão Carrara writes about her years as a public defender. "I couldn't live without writing, but I need to earn a living, and my work is connected to what I end up writing," she says. "In Brazil, the role of the public defender is very specific: we focus on legal matters, but we also address the problems of citizens. In my country, there is still a lot of precariousness and struggle."