#eva baltasar

[propertiesofjoy]

boulder, eva baltasar

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

“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.”

Permafrost, by Eva Baltasar (translated by Julia Sanches )

[granularbrain]

A successful suicide, these days, is heroic. The world is full of unscrupulous people certified in first aid; they’re everywhere, gray and unassuming like female pigeons but aggressive like mothers. They foil death with cardiac massages and careful Heimlich maneuvers. They’re a pack of thieves. You can’t even ram an olive pit down the wrong tube without them forcing you to spit it out, even if they break ribs or puncture lungs in the process. And there you are, covered in dry-martini puke, the olive pit hurled like a trophy at a corner of the room. I wouldn’t mind dying in a corner. It should be possible to rent corners for dying in peace, without interference or self-activated oxygen tanks dropping down on you at the very last moment, corners where safety precautions guarantee—where they assure you—a proper death.

– Eva Baltasar, tr. by Julia Sanches, from Permafrost

[beguinnings]

Novellas number 7, 8, and 9:

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

2.5/5: This was not really for me. It felt like it was created in a lab to pander to the female-rage obsessed crowd, and at times was just being shocking for the sake of being shocking. And don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with female rage as a concept, but things can become cheapened when they become popular tropes and I really feel like that was the case here. There was a really interesting plot point that wasn’t revealed until two-thirds of the way through the book, and not only would I have cared a lot more about the story if it had been brought up much sooner, I felt like the author barely ended up doing anything with it. It’s also already being turned into a movie even though it only came out in February of this year which I feel kind of underlines my first point. (162 pages)

The Great Divorce by CS Lewis

4/5: I liked this, but I don’t necessarily recommend it if you aren’t religious. It gave me a lot to think about. Lewis’s idea in this book is “Earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell; and Earth, if put second to Heaven, will have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.” But there was also a long rambling passage in the middle that smacked of misogyny, which I guess one can only expect in a book that is 80 years old and written by a man. (160 pages)

Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated by Julia Sanches

4/5: This was a great read about a doomed, toxic relationship (although I feel like that’s not really how it usually seems to be presented). Almost as soon as the two characters met I took to using different colors to highlight their red flags and my God there were so many. I loved reading fiction from the perspective of a masculine lesbian, which I don’t find very often (if you know more, please recommend them!) and I loved how real the relationship between the characters felt in all its flaws and obsessions and poor decisions made. The writing was lyrical and very beautiful, although I noticed one or two glaring grammatical errors that should have been caught. (112 pages)

[silliestbutch]

Eva Baltasar's prose is so hot she just gets the hot wet pathetic raw visceral hunger of lesbian desire so so good

[docesesentaysiete]

No estoy borracha, el alcohol limpia y abrillanta la lengua, las encías, la mente.

Eva Baltasar, Boulder

[wavesketcher-sq]

for my sapphic girlies,

I’ve read two GREAT gay gay gay books in January that I just need to rec:

Boulder by Eva Baltasar (translated from Catalan)

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

The writing!???? The sex scenes!???? My my my.

; also, much frustration watching S2 of XO, Kitty and skipping all scenes from anyone who wasn’t gay/indulging in gay thoughts xoxo

[epistolaire-livre]

Boulder (2020), Eva Baltasar, p. 12-13.