Jacob Bergareche
is a Spanish screenwriter, producer and author. He has created several television programs and documentary series for the largest and most important Spanish networks, and is a regular contributor to some columns in the press, where he writes stories for newspapers and magazines. However, he is best known for novels that have moved critics.
Among his most famous works are Return stations (2019) The perfect days (2021) and Goodbyes (2023) Although he began to publish late—at the age of forty-three—the sensitivity of his prose and his ability to create conflicts that seem unresolvable, but are resolved with a lot of creativity, have surprised everyone and everyone.
Brief biography of Jacobo Bergareche
First years
Jacobo Bergareche was born in 1976, into a successful family, where their great-grandparents, grandparents, parents and siblings had managed to build prolific careers in their respective fields. He, for his part, always had the character of an artist, which was what he wanted to be since he was a child, when he wrote little notes and made drawings in his classes, without knowing what he would become later.
Choosing a path very different from that of all his elders, decided to enroll in the school of Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. Although, some time later, she abandoned it to enroll in the Faculty of Literature and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston. As the author was born and studied in London for many years, he had no problems adapting to the language and culture.
The works of the young Bergareche
After your academic period, He dedicated himself mainly to creating scripts for T.V. series, as well as their production. Regarding his work, he has said that it allowed him to arm himself against criticism, because, when a script is made, that material is constantly modified by other scriptwriters, producers and actors, so it ends up being a collective effort.
En este sentido, Jacobo Bergareche trained to receive and accept criticism, both from his circle of close readers and from those who enjoy his books. In addition to his previously mentioned works, the author also dedicated himself to advertising for several years. At the same time, he created a mobile app design company in Austin, Texas, United States.
Jacobo Bergareche and literary creation
Throughout his short but brilliant career in literature, Bergareche has published collections of poems, stories, children's stories and novels. In general, all his work stands out for its reflexivity, Well, the author uses literature as a mere excuse to ask those types of uncomfortable questions that no one seems to be able to answer, but that everyone asks themselves at least once in their life.
However, The Spaniard is not one of those typical nostalgic, sad, men of letters. weighed down by guilt, but a subject who, through letters, tests his own curiosity and that of his readers, sending questions into the air that only philosophers dare to answer, because, according to him, he tends to write about things that He doesn't know to see if anyone answers them.
All the works of Jacobo Bergareche
- Beach (poetry, 2004);
- Coma (play, 2015);
- Adventures in Bodytown (children's book series);
- Return stations (autofiction, 2019);
- The perfect days (novel, 2021);
- Goodbyes (novel, 2023).
Most notable works by Jacobo Bergareche
Return stations (2019)
This book begins with a phrase by Antonio Viera: “The book is a mute that speaks, a deaf that responds, a blind that guides. A dead man who lives.” Later, the story of a murder is told. A father calls his children to inform them that he has just killed the youngest of them. Since then, there is no time to be sad or try to explain what happened.
Why? Very simple: from that moment on they have their whole lives ahead of them. Return stations It is a work about grief, but also about how the trigger arises capable of modifying an entire life., shifting the focus to the lens through which the characters see the world around them. In this way, Bergareche searches the memory of someone who will never be the same again.
The perfect days (2021)
The novel follows Luis, a journalist tired of life, his work and his long marriage. The protagonist plans to attend a conference in Austin, Texas, where there is the only person capable of removing his boredom.: Camila. However, before her departure, he receives a message from this woman telling him that it would be best to leave her story in her memory. What is she supposed to do now? she wonders.
Later, still devastated, he takes refuge in the University archive, where, by chance, he comes across some letters from William Faulkner to his lover, Meta Carpenter. Reading this long correspondence not only helps Luis mentally reconstruct his sordid adventure., but also to reflect on his tedious marriage and what are the keys to living happily.
Goodbyes (2023)
Every writer has his fetish topics, themes to which he cannot avoid returning, and Jacobo Bergareche is no exception, since all his novels revolve around loss, passion and memory. Goodbyes It is a work that perfectly frames these three concerns of the author, since Diego, its protagonist, is tormented by the fervent remembrance of a woman.
The novel presents Diego and Claudia, a married couple who are about to celebrate the inauguration of their house in Menorca.. However, a few days before the event, while he is taking a walk with his family, the man recognizes a foreigner with whom he met in the United States. He hasn't seen her in twenty years, but she helped him recover from a traumatic event, so he wouldn't be able to forget her.
Best books to read in 2024
- The properties of thirst, by Marianne Wiggins;
- The silence and the creaks, by Jon Bilbao;
- greenhouse planet, by Rafael Navarro de Castro;
- Almudena, by Luis García Montero;
- The stone angel, by Margaret Laurence;
- I almost don't remember anymore, by Clara Morales;
- The dream of the Crespi family, by Alessandra Selmi;
- The colony, by Audrey Magee;
- Melancholy, by Jon Fosse;
- The particular memory of Rosa Masur, by Vladimir Vertlib.