I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness

Emma — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Nestled among rugged mountains, in a remote part of Catalonia frequented by wolf hunters, bandits, witches, deserters, ghosts, beasts and demons, sits the old farmhouse called Mas Clavell. Inside, an impossibly old woman lies on her deathbed while family and caretakers drift in and out. All the women who have ever lived and died in that house are waiting for her to join them. They are preparing to throw her a party. As day turns to night, four hundred years’ worth of memories unspool, and the house reverberates with the women’s stories. Stories of mysterious visions, of those born without eyelashes and tongues or with deformed hearts. But it begins with the story of the matriarch Blanca who double-crosses the devil, heedless of what the consequences might be. I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness is a formally daring and entrancing novel in which Irene SolÃ¯ ¿ ½ explores the duality and essential link between light and darkness, life and death, oblivion and memory.

When I Sing, Mountains Dance

Emma — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

“SolÃ¯ ¿ ½ pushes past the limits of human experience to tell a story of instinct and earth-time that is irresistible in its jagged glory.” – C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills is Gold When Domenec – mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer – dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war. But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life’s struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the inhabitants of the mountain – human, animal and other – come together in a chorus of voices to bear witness to the sorrows of one family, and to the savage beauty of the landscape. This remarkable English-language debut is lyrical, mythical, elemental, and ferociously imaginative.

SolÃ , Irene – The Bell Bookshop

I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness

When I Sing, Mountains Dance