Antònia Carré-Pons: “With cancer, we do what we can, and that depends on who we are and how we react.”

BarcelonaPerhaps because it is her most intimate book, Antònia Carré-Pons (Terrassa, 1960) states in a hushed tone —"lest my other books get angry"— that The big family (Club Editor) is her favorite novel. The writer, medievalist philologist and editor of Cal Carré, has reason to be proud. From her memories, she has constructed a beautiful story about the relationship between two sisters, daughters of butchers, who take on the family business and life in completely opposite ways: Rateta makes literature her vocation, Sió takes the reins of the shop and continues the inherited trade. With the skill that comes with experience (this is her tenth fiction title), Carré-Pons delivers a story about buried feelings and the strength of family bonds that is read with emotion and tenderness.

In the last interview we did with you, you said that, afterThe casting (Club Editor, 2024), you would write whatever came from your heart. And it came out The big family.

— Gosh, I forgot. It's true, this novel came from my heart. I haven't written an autobiography, but the book's framework is autobiographical facts.

The novel has three distinct parts: childhood, a moment in the protagonists' adulthood, and the end, with the illness. Why did you choose this structure?

— I wanted to talk about the relationship between two sisters. The first part is structured in very short chapters. There are memories of the slaughterhouse, the pigs, the heads, the blood, and also how they fight but love each other. When we remember, we do so in flashes, and that's how I constructed this first part. Then I take the sisters to adulthood, when they've had to find their place in the world. Ratta has fled the fate the adults had planned for her, has become a medievalist, and is going to a conference to give the closing talk. Sió has stayed home and continued with the business. There's an emotional and physical separation. And in the third part, the two sisters are reunited by two elements: illness, the cancer they and their mother had, and childhood, because they remember again.

Why were you interested in writing about the relationship between two sisters?

— This novel was born out of perplexity. I've always wondered how it's possible that two sisters, born in the same place and who have experienced the same things, react so differently to the common presence of pigs and have had such divergent perspectives on life and character traits. The final catalyst was when my sister fell ill. I saw that she reacted to the illness very differently than I did.

How did you deal with the butcher shop and animal meat when you were little?

— I was so scared, I lived in terror. Ever since I saw my grandfather preparing the black sausage, his arms inside a blue bucket stirring the meat, I've never been able to eat anything else. I remember going down those pitch-black stairs and seeing the pig heads, with their big ears and empty eyes, but they seemed to be staring at me, and my father and grandfather wearing bloody aprons and carrying huge knives. It made me very anxious. When I mentioned it at home, my sister told me it was a chard. She had accepted and normalized those scenes.

Sió takes over the butcher shop, while Rateta breaks with her parents' expectations: that she continue the family business. How did you want to portray this break?

— I never intended to make a drama out of it. I don't treat cancer as an irreparable misfortune, but as what it is: an illness that many people suffer from. And I do the same with family breakdown. When we're young, some of us feel the need to rebel against what we've been given. Others don't, and in fact, in the novel, I don't say which option is the right one, because both are. In fact, if everyone abandoned family businesses, we'd all buy packaged meat at the supermarket; there wouldn't be stores where they'd cut it for you whenever you want, in the piece you want.

It's a novel that speaks of intangible inheritances and legacies, especially the values passed on to you by your parents.

— Everything I rejected as a young man because I thought my parents were imposing it on me, as an adult I've seen wasn't so bad. I've realized that those values are part of my moral identity, and I want to reclaim them. They're values I apply to butchering, but I think they're generational. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, they were passed down through families.

Not now?

— Now, things are going as they are… You're on the subway, an elderly woman gets on, and those of us who stand up so she can sit down are also elderly. Sometimes a young person does it, but these values that were passed down from generation to generation have been lost along the way. I don't write literature about myself, I write literature about us. In this novel, there's a family that never says it loves. When the girls are little, there's a very everyday relationship with their parents; everyone works hard. Feelings are hidden, but they're there. They circulate like groundwater, and when they're needed, they burst forth like a gush.

Do you also conceive of illness as an inheritance?

— No, I see it as a circumstantial element. No genetic mutation has been found between us, and therefore, I prefer to think it isn't. I've experienced it as something painful, but it happens to many people. At one point, Rateta says that everyone does what they can, and I think this is really what happens. We do what we can, and that depends on who we are and how we react. Rateta reflects more on what happened to her, while Sió, on the other hand, does what she's always done: flee, travel. I've tried to talk about the illness from several perspectives: that of the sick people, who have different attitudes, but also that of those who accompany them, because not everyone knows how to accompany them well.

Why was it important to handle it without drama?

— Because I can't stand self-pity. Everyone experiences one thing or another. I don't feel particularly unlucky, nor particularly fortunate. Illness and death are part of life, and we must accept them. To show this, I've done a significant amount of stylistic work. I've tried to write simply, which doesn't mean simply. I didn't want to overuse rhetorical devices; I wanted the language to be easy and flow well. I didn't want to appeal to easy tears because in the Western society we live in, we have no right to complain about anything.

What has medieval literature taught you when it comes to writing?

— Since Rateta is a medievalist, I've taken advantage of the opportunity to sneak in a few lectures that discuss the vision of medieval medicine and women's bodies. No point, of course; you read this and your prose will inevitably improve. Besides, medieval writers like Tirant lo Blanc, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Jaume Roig are very entertaining.

The Cal Carré shop closed, but you've sort of transformed your butcher shop into a publishing house. Is this a way of keeping the legacy alive?

— Yes, it's my sweet revenge. I've turned Cal Carré into what they didn't want it to be, because sometimes we have to adapt to change.