Five books to enjoy on the beach

1. Yoga, Emmanuel Carrère

Yoga It is a dazzling book, one of the ones that Emmanuel Carrère is already used to. It was going to be a totally different book from his previous works. It was going to be a gentle, serene book in which the French author was going to pour his more than two decades of meditation practice. I was going to try to unravel in those pages what yoga is for him. “I imagined publishing a subtle and smiling little book” he said, which reflected his experience with the practices of tai-chi, yoga and vipassana meditation.

However, nothing ends up being what it should be and Carrère reconstructs the path that led him to write this book whose production was interrupted by a deep depression with suicidal tendencies that led him to remain hospitalized for several months with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Once again Carrère opens up to his readers without any kind of regard and spits on the paper everything, absolutely everything that is. Once again, any attempt to classify their work in a genre makes futile and goes through Yoga fiction, autobiography, essay and journalistic chronicle.

With the same rawness that he approached other people’s stories in Of other people’s lives, Limonov, A Russian Novel or The adversary, in Yoga Carrère tells Carrère in the manner of Carrère.

2. Little things like that, Claire Keegan

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In Little things like that Claire Keegan tells the story of Bill Furlong, a coal and timber seller, married with five daughters, and always determined to move his family forward. Willing never to let the harsh past that he had to live weigh down on him, the Irish winter of 1985 nevertheless finds him wondering for the first time about his father, reviewing his childhood.

This little novel Keegan rebuilds a seemingly simple story that nevertheless hides a much more complex and dark background, such as the one in which the hypocrisy of a society capable of the worst remains uncovered.

3. I will remember for you, Juan Forn

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Juan Forn left ready I will remember for you shortly before he died on June 20. “In all these years, every Friday, every back cover that I sent to the newspaper (Page 12), I understood her walking on the beach, or sitting on the dune looking at the sea: where to start, where to get there, what is the true story I am telling, what does she talk about in the background, what do I have to do with her, what It says about us ”, Forn said about those contratapas that are the raw material of this book.

But nevertheless I will remember for you It is not just a mere compilation of his best back covers. This book proposes a trip around the world and to the 20th century in which the stories are imperceptibly coupled and grow as in a long unique story that runs on the border between fiction and reality, shaping a story that defines an era.

4. The widow, José Saramago

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José Saramago’s new book is also his oldest book. Is that The widow, Originally published in the 1940s and under another title, it was the first book to be awarded by the Portuguese Nobel Prize for Literature, but it is the first time it has been published in Spanish.

Its edition was the starting point with which the centenary of Saramago began to be commemorated, which will be celebrated on November 16 and which will include activities and events throughout this year to remember this essential Portuguese writer.

Saramago feather lovers will find in The widow the clear marks of what would later become the unmistakable prose of the author of books such as Essay on Blindness, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ or Convent memorial.

5. Strange fruits, Leila Guerriero

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It is a revised and expanded edition of this jewel of the journalistic chronicle. In Strange fruits Leila Guerriero reveals to us the most sensitive, vigorous and throbbing face of a profession that is going through difficult times. The chronicles collected in this book, written between 2001 and 2019, constitute a magisterial lesson in journalism and show the world from a unique, intense and different perspective.

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