Permafrost

I wanted to start with Permafrost and then continue with Boulder (shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize). Even though the novels are not connected, they are just part of the same trilogy. And now I’m so excited and can’t wait to read Boulder.

The world is full of unscrupulous people certified in first aid; they’re everywhere, gray and unassuming like female pigeons but aggressive like mothers.

Main character is an outcast in her family. She is very direct, and in the blurb, she is described as a »no-bullshit lesbian«. She studied art but didn’t get a job right away. To escape her family and probably also herself, she goes travelling. First she goes to Scotland as an au pair and later to Brussels. Despite the many lovers along the way, she is still very lonely.

Permafrost is like a layer of ice that covers her. It’s a defense mechanism, a shield that protects her from the outside world - the society. And she keeps it frozen. But there are moments when she is aware that some actions make small cracks in her permafrost.

Eva Baltasar explores two pretty opposite forces, body and desire on one side and death and suicidal tendency on the other.

Permafrost is a quick read. I loved the lyrical writing. It’s a short novel with short chapters. At times, it is funny, but it is also sad.

 

 

Details:

• author: Eva Baltasar
• full title: Permafrost
  
• genre: literary fiction
  
• format/type: bookfiction
• country: Spain
  
• topics:
  
• publisher: And Other Stories
  
• publish date: April 6, 2021
• pages: 144
  

My Rating of the Book:

• content: 💙💙💙💙💙

Excerpt from the Book:

 

I’ve settled on an edge, I live on this edge and wait for the moment when I’ll leave the edge, my temporary home. Temporary—like any home, in fact, or like a body. I’m not on medication. Chemicals are bridles that restrict you and slow you to a harmless pace. Chemicals mean early salvation; they ward off sin, or maybe they just teach us to label as sinful the exercise of freedom attained in times of peace—before death, of course. Mom self-medicates, Dad self-medicates, my sister didn’t at first but now she does too, because she’s grown-up and understood. Self-medication is a permanent temporary solution, like the low-watt bulb hanging in the hall. Twenty years with a dimly lit hall—how little it takes to become used to seeing so little. “We had halogen bulbs installed in the whole apartment and we forgot the hall!” Laughter. “And the best part is we didn’t even realize until yesterday!” Twenty years had gone by. Twenty years of putting on lipstick three times a day, a hairbreadth away from the mirror, twenty years of fumbling blindly for the keys. I used to think it was normal—when you’re a kid, your home life determines what’s normal. And this normalcy shapes you. You grow up sheltered inside its patterns and take on its body, as does your brain, keen and malleable as clay. And then—though it takes years—the blindness cracks open under the force of a hammer striking over and over, but by then you’re trapped inside the tight nucleus that has already taken 90 percent of all that was good in you to put some holes in. Get out now, if you can! And be happy while you’re at it, like everybody else. Medication: quite the antidote. Not for me, though—best to keep moving wildly to the edge, and then decide. After a while, you’ll find that the edge gives you room to live, vertical as ever, brushing up against the void. Not only can you live on it, but there are even different ways of growing there. If surviving is what it’s all about, maybe resistance is the only way to live intensely. Now, on this edge, I feel alive, more alive than ever.

About the Author: 

 

Eva Baltasar is a Catalan poet and writer. She has a bachelor's degree in Pedagogy from the University of Barcelona. She has published ten books of poetry, which have earned numerous awards including the 2008 Miquel de Palol, the 2010 Benet Ribas, and the 2015 Gabriel Ferrater. Permafrost was her first novel.