Such a beautiful and evocative book. as its own title. In it, Julia Viejo brings together a total of thirty-four stories of just a few pages that tell us about human relations and of the need to make connections among us in a hostile world. Some words that are not shocking if you know the time they were written: between 2020 and 2021. A few years that, although they were dark, "you could always find hope and handholds in the strangest and most peculiar situations”.
A form of front facing the problems that have their direct reflection in their stories. A feature that makes them have a tone of lightness unusual, in which the strange shines. “The unusual can keep hope in life. As contradictory as it sounds, it's something we do more often than we think. The characters in my stories may seem extravagant, but it is something that we all do”, explains Julia.
In the cell there was a firefly, by Julia Viejo.
a strangeness that in her stories she is taken to that place where reality and fiction dissolve into one. “In some I reach a point of Science fiction, in others of fantasy and in the majority to that ambivalent terrain of the extraordinary, where it is more related to reality than it seems. that space of the fable in which reality is stretched until you don't know if it's true or fantasy, ”she adds.
HUMOR AS A HUMAN RESOURCE
In addition to using the extraordinary, what break reality, He also makes use of humor to make the stories more bearable. As many of us do in daily life. “It is an extremely natural and human what we have. Many times it is not intended, but when things happen to us that take us out of our comfort zone of our daily life, we are left in shock. And one of our first resources is crack a joke, because it's our way smooth things out that happen to us” says Julia Viejo.
A humor which is vital in the book, as can be read in the story in which a protagonist Maintains that people joke with what they really care about. "In fact, that's just what sets off the alarm bell. narrator of that story,” she notes. That character is with a lover that he doesn't make jokes about her, so he ends up realizing that "it's not important for him because she didn't bother to get him into her humor codes."
“This is what humor means to me. I did the book in a dark moment and it helped me a lot, for example, writing strange and funny situations like the one that occurs in the story of a man who puts head on a magical tree. It may seem frivolous, but it is not frivolous at all, because it is a way of confront us and to understand what we are and to put a name to the problems and catastrophes”, she says.
Just like that man who gets into a magical tree, the book is full of bizarre stories. Like the beautiful story of a mother who sows lightning with her daughter or the man who receives a call to include suicide in his life insurance policy. “I was very interested in developing what happens From stories like this, where can it lead? That is, where is it located? I miss him in our lives”, says the writer.
THE FLASHES OF LIFE NEST IN THE EDGE
A belief, that of thinking that it exists something beyond reality that can help us in the hardest moments. Those little sparkles that we experience daily, that nest on the edges, is where Julia Viejo thinks she is “the spark of life”.
“Things that at first we do not see but that you can chain to create a narrative of your life. For example, chance by itself it is already a bit of magic. I am not interested in whether it exists or not, but that it can be, ”she points out.
And like she said Ana Maria Matute, one of her favorite writers, an approach to it is to believe in the characters that nest in the books. To the point that, as she pointed out, if we met one of her people on the street, we believed them, because she had invented them.
“The moment we write something and we share it, it becomes more real. Not for being in a book and being words are less true. Sounds crazy or a childish thing, but it is a kind of existence that deserves much respect. The characters in the books I have read and those in my stories keep me company. Especially the latter, because you have to do a very big exercise of empathy to create them. They end up being with you and becoming part of you, so they become very real”, she ends her.
So you know, go to Search to your favorite characters for the Madrid Book Fair. sure there is more than one hidden between the books