Three new writers you can't miss

BarcelonaThe rentrée The literary scene has arrived loaded with literary debuts. Among the authors making their debut in the publishing market, three stand out for their originality and ambition. Mireia Giró has written a hilarious comedy that sharply questions romantic love and today's society; Gil Pratsobrerroca has shaped a thriller A fast-paced novel that draws on contemporary masters of the genre, especially Joël Dicker, and Laura Tomàs has published a collection of stories with fantastical touches that are full of disturbing and moving images about nature, motherhood, and our traditions. They are three narrative voices that land in Catalan literature with force and with the desire to remain there for a long time.

Mireia Giró

The hilarious and sharp adventure of a mother looking for a partner

If she hadn't known that her manuscript would become a book, Mireia Giró (Barcelona, ​​​​1979) probably wouldn't have started writing. This screenwriter and communicator has three jobs - she works in theAPM? from TV3 and collaborates in the You first and to Don't know of RAC1—and is a single mother of one. Throughout the day, she had very few hours left to dedicate to writing a novel. "But the editor Ester Pujol insisted that I take it. She felt my interventions in the Matina Codina from RAC105 and said there was a book there. If I hadn't been sure it would be published, I wouldn't have done it," explains Giró. Titled Sara Bonsom's disastrous therapy (Universo), her debut as a writer, is the funny and at times tragic adventure of a single mother looking for a man to live with. "Her romantic story begins when she's already eaten her aniseed, she already has the future that the fairy tale promises. She has had a son on her own, whom she loves unconditionally; she hasn't needed any man to achieve it. Why does she still want him?" asks Giró.

The novel works at two speeds, combining first-person chapters with Sara explaining her hardships and others in third person that portray the men she dates. The first ones are also a reflection on everything the protagonist works on in therapy but that, when she tries to put into practice in her daily life, doesn't quite work. "Sara thinks something isn't right inside her, that she needs to change something to be worthy of consideration. Therapists tell her to live in the present, to have self-esteem, to try to understand the limiting beliefs she has. It's as if it were all her fault. Perhaps instead of wasting so much energy healing ourselves, a good therapy would be to go out and vindicate ourselves."

With a sharp voice and a dry sense of humor, the writer explores Sara's romantic adventures with a series of men who are beyond belief. "I thought I had painted a compassionate portrait of men... Many of them use relationships to inflate their egos, to fill gaps. There's a lot of lack of commitment. Now that romance can be free, that two people don't even need each other to have children, it would be a good time to have healthier and more honest relationships, but it seems they only develop." the writer.

Gil Pratsobrerroca

The young writer who is reflected in Joël Dicker

Before starting to write his first novel, Gil Pratsobrerroca (Vic, 1996) was clear that he needed to draw on the masters of the crime genre. That's why he started reading Liz Moore, Don Wislow, and, above all, Joël Dicker. Pratsobrerroca has been a reader and admirer of the latter for years. "I'm a big fan and I don't hide it. I wanted my novel to resonate, especially in terms of the structure and the way I dispense the information," explains the writer. After all that fieldwork, he began working on The game of silence, his first novel, which coincidentally is published by La Campana, Dicker's Catalan imprint. On horseback thriller and the horror genre, The game of silence It begins with the disappearance of a charming 7-year-old girl in a mountain village near France. Her parents, Jan and Carla, are the nucleus around which a devilish plot full of secrets revolves. "They form a seemingly perfect couple who leave Barcelona because of gentrification and because they want to raise their daughter in a natural environment. I wrote the characters with the intention that anyone who reads the book can identify with them, or can see someone they know," says the author.

Built with a structure of flashbacks which makes the plot advance at a gallop, The game of silence Accompany this couple as their respective secrets come to light. Some of them are related to Ilona, ​​​​a crazy school teacher who serves as a fun counterpoint in a dark plot interspersed with horror scenes. "There are two stories, one in the present and one in the past. As the plot progresses, secrets are revealed. I have always tried to be honest with the reader, not deceive or mislead them unnecessarily," says Pratsobrerroca. The fact that everything takes place in a small, isolated village gives the novel a closed atmosphere reminiscent of Agatha Christie's stories. "One of the charms of crime novels is being able to think that everyone is a suspect. If I had set him in Barcelona, ​​​​the plot would have gotten out of hand," says the author. Before debuting in literature, Pratsobrerroca had mainly dedicated himself to audiovisual work, with series such as The Monkey Theorem from TV3– and on the radio, as a scriptwriter forThe bunker from Catalonia Radio.

Laura Tomàs

Vibrant and unhinged stories that transform reality with fantasy

With the birth of her second daughter ten years ago, Laura Tomàs (Andorra la Vella, 1982) resumed her writing habit. "I suffered from postpartum depression; it was a very difficult time. I remember leaving the baby with a day mother for a couple of hours each day, going to a park, and writing whatever came to mind," explains the writer. This is how the first stories of Matermorfosis (Medusa), a collection of vibrant, magnetic, and unnerving stories where reality, fantasy, and terror share the stage. In many of them, the shadows—but also the lights—of motherhood take on diverse forms, as in Blood of my blood, in which the protagonist sees how her life diminishes as her baby grows and feeds on her. "It's very based on my experience postpartum with my first daughter. I had reflux while breastfeeding and I breastfed a lot. I lost a lot of weight. I remember a pair of pants that fit me well on Monday and fell off by Sunday," says Tomàs.

The stories often start from an everyday situation—a girl playing in the garden, a woman awakened by a kiss—which is transformed by the appearance of a fantastical element. The author draws on myths and popular figures, such as the cockatoo, the legend of Saint George, or the water women, approaching them from a contemporary perspective and incorporating a different perspective than the traditional one. "I want to tell stories that take place here to help build a narrative of a fantastical place. I find that much more interesting," emphasizes Tomàs. Among her references, in fact, there are a handful who are Catalan writers (Elisenda Solsona, Eva Baltasar, Roser Cabré-Verdiell, Mercè Rodoreda), although the Russian Anna Starobínets and the Argentines Mariana Enriquez and Samanta Schweblin have also been literary beacons for her.

Tomàs is now debuting with her first collection of short stories, but she has been active in the Catalan and Andorran literary world for years. She is the driving force behind the Bagaleu Award for short climate fiction and has participated in several short story collections, such as Barcelona 2059 (Never Again, 2021) and Extraordinary (Malas Hierbas, 2020). A clinical psychologist by profession, Tomàs explains that her work has inevitably contributed to her creations. "In the stories, what I do is essentially put myself inside a character and their way of seeing the world," says the author, who also explores mental health issues such as depression and toxic relationships in her stories.