Santiago Posteguillo and Ayanta Barilli, winner and finalist of the 2018 Planeta Prize.
A Dark Violet Sea, by Ayanta Barilli, is the story of a women's family dynasty, told by women because, according to the author herself, womenThroughout history, they have always been the family memory and they are the ones that choose the version that is told of the story. They are the guardians of the family past and the decision makers of the tone in which this past is told.
The novel will see the light of day November 6th, along with the winning work: Yo, Julia, by Santiago Posteguillo. Meanwhile we can tell you a preview of what we will find in this exciting story.
The plot
Four generations of women of the same family, from the mid-XNUMXth century to the present, doomed to repeat the same fate. All the women of the family see their lives marked by two tragic events. He breast cancer which, in the first generations is mortal, and the bad choice of men with those who share life, wrong men and, in many cases, dangerous.
The fourth generation of these women decide to break away from this fate cursed that marks the life of his mother, his grandmother and great-grandmother and understands that he can only do so by connecting with the past, understanding and rebuilding family history.
Ayanta Barilli, finalist for the 2018 Planet Award, with A Dark Violet Sea.
The creative process of A Dark Violet Sea.
"I started this novel with the last chapter" confesses Ayanta Barilli. Knowing the final chapter led her through the tunnel of writing a novel. It was the light I saw at the end. And it is that A Dark Violet Sea is not a linear story.
“When I wrote the voices of these four women crossed in my head,” the author tells us, “and I wanted to tell it how I felt it, because I felt that these four women had so many things in common that they really were just one.
Told by the fourth generation, the novel is a puzzle between present and past, which is mixed through the voices of its four protagonists that function as literary hinges.
How this novel came about
A Dark Violet Sea is the author's first solo novel. He had previously written another novel, Pacto de Sangre, co-authored with his father, Fernando Sanchez-Dragó.
A Dark Violet Sea is a feminine novel that does not respond to a social moment but to an inner need of the author to tell this story. It coincides with a moment of vindication of the female voice and a moment in which the stories of women begin to gain a voice that was denied them in history. There are many silenced women in history, who were hidden behind men, many stories to tell.
The male characters of this novel consist of mostly negative, almost demonic, but as with the dynasty family of women who star in the story undergo an evolutionary process, generation after generation, until you reach the man who deserves to be loved and respected.
"I like stories with a happy ending"
explains Barilli, fed up with the horrors that are so fashionable in television series and in many written stories, because destiny is in what we imagine.
We are left with some precious words from Ayanta:
"If we think of a happy ending, we will not head towards it."