'Chocolate Street': A book full of memorable pages

The title I have given to this article includes the phrase "time ago", which was the title of Ramon Solsona's magnificent novel published in 2022 –for me, one of the most consistent Catalan novels of recent decades. A series of unfortunate circumstances meant that this prodigious work didn't receive the recognition it deserved.

Solsona returns now with a different, lesser work compared to that one. But perhaps the mistake is comparing it: Chocolate Street It is not a novel, but a volume of memoirs that is read with relish. And it is read because the author is one of the greatest architects of this language threatened with death that is, unfortunately, ours. In his historical and sentimental review, conducted with grace and a seasoning of irony that never pushes (nor, much less, draws blood), the writer acknowledges that, in the aforementioned novel, he brought to light some elements that, in the present volume, are reported from a different point of view, that of lived chronicle; the character of Ricardet, a boy with an intellectual disability—Mongolian, as it was said decades ago—which played a greater role in fiction than in the telling of family history; and, finally, a teacher who turned to alcohol to combat her social isolation.

The work begins with the first memories of the family home on Calle Bellver, in Gràcia, near a factory producing the popular Cola Cao, which spread the sweet aroma of its production throughout the neighborhood. Ramon Solsona is the second of four siblings: three boys and a girl, the eldest. And, despite the hardships typical of the fifties and early sixties, the story presents a fairly happy childhood and a happy life, in a middle-class family with strong Christian convictions. When the author follows the family roots and gets into the quarrel over the drinks of aunts and uncles, the reading became a bit tedious for me. I was more interested in the evocation of my grandfather, Ramon Solsona Bordes.

The work is full of memorable pages, and never better written. I'd like to point out one, regarding the concept recycle. The work of the scrap metal dealer is described in profusion of detail. The man "weighed everything with the scale, named a price, negotiated, and put everything in the sack, made of burlap, naturally." The scale—the scale, of course—was "one of those specific instruments of a profession that had the prestige of singular utensils: the long shovel of the bakers, the pencil sharpener for harvesting stocking stitches, the three-dimensional anvil of the shoemakers, the monocular magnifying glass of the watchmakers and the diamond-tipped cutter of the nurses, the pump for selling oil in bulk, the enormous satchel of the postmen..."

We are all children of many chances

There are a few passages of novelistic quality. I would stick with the one about Morocco, a term that refers to a Norwegian with whom an aunt of the author, Pilar, had a rather unflattering relationship, because the man turned out to be a complete jerk (one morruego). "We are all children of many chance events," Solsona concludes in the final chapter of the work, the beautiful section entitled "A Family Selfie." He had previously warned that the passage of time is "a succession of unforeseen circumstances, decisions made on the fly, and intertwined paths that you can only grasp with perspective over the years." Perhaps that's why he waited until he was over seventy to begin writing his memoirs.

But, in my opinion, the most suggestive aspect of the book is what is also often one of the deepest attractions of Solsona's work: the style, both plain and powerful, and the constant reflections on the language. Of the latter, there are plenty to give and sell, and lovers of our language will rave about something not to be said. They are often included in asides. I'll note a couple: "we passed the inspection on our hands, knees—"reeds", "Indian ink was used —Indian ink It sounds like an overcorrection to me." Or when he says that people no longer die, but leaves us(Speaking of India ink: I fully agree with the statement that "stationery store windows were as hypnotic as pastry shop windows." For me, they still are.)