LETRAS

Imagina: eres un tiburón de las finanzas estilo lobo de Wall Street, perteneces a una buena familia y siempre lo has tenido todo; por no hablar de que no hay chica que se te resista. Y cuando estás a punto de rozar la cumbre del éxito con las yemas de los dedos, lo pierdes todo... por tu culpa. Tu única salida es volver a empezar y ahí estás, con tu traje esnob, en un polígono industrial en tu primer día como ceniciento. Pero, tranquilo, Alejo, que este no es el cuento de siempre, ¿o tal vez sí? Después de vender más de 4.500.000 ejemplares de sus obras Elísabet Benavent despliega en Esnob su virtuosismo narrativo para hablarnos de las relaciones de amor en un mundo frenético donde lo habitual es encontrar a la persona a golpe de match. Esnob es una radiografía de las relaciones humanas mordaz e irónica, divertida y tierna, porque en este cuento lo de menos es el final.

Uno de los escasos relatos en la historia de la exploración polar protagonizado por una mujer inusual. Cuenta su vida durante el año que pasó en Groenlandia con ocasión de la expedición de 1891 comandada por su marido, Robert Peary, que habría de ser una de las figuras centrales en la pugna ártica. En la bahía McCormick, al norte de la isla, construyen un refugio en madera y allí convive, en duras condiciones, con la población local. Tras el impacto que le provocan sus extrañas costumbres, nuestra dama comparte experiencias con las mujeres inuit, de cuya vida, hábitos y cultura deja registro detallado en estas páginas. Nos habla del cosido y tratamiento de las pieles con las que se visten, de la comida, de la vida familiar en el interior del iglú, de sus desplazamientos en trineo, del emparejamiento o de hábitos terribles como el infanticidio cuando se quedan viudas. Presencia escenas de extrema violencia hacia ellas y hasta un episodio de Pibloktop, o histeria ártica, fenómeno ligado a la dureza de su condición femenina. Información enormemente valiosa para la incipiente etnología de la época que desconocía la vida cotidiana de las poblaciones aborígenes árticas, pero también asoma en estos diarios el aguijón de la aventura extrema, la observación y registro de la belleza feroz de ese entorno hostil, junto a un plácido canto a la vida al aire libre y el placer de los pequeños detalles. Isabel Coixet se inspiró en esta valerosa mujer para el personaje principal de su película «Nadie quiere la noche».

Written while Mary Shelley was in a self-imposed lockdown after the loss of her husband and children, and in the wake of intersecting crises including the climate-changing Mount Tambora eruption and a raging cholera outbreak, The Last Man (1826) is the first end-of-mankind novel, an early work of climate fiction, and a prophetic depiction of environmental change. Set in the late twenty-first century, the book tells of a deadly pandemic that leaves a lone survivor, and follows his journey through a post-apocalyptic world that’s devoid of humanity and reclaimed by nature. But rather than give in to despair, Shelley uses the now-ubiquitous end-times plot to imagine a new world where freshly-formed communities and alternative ways of being stand in for self-important politicians serving corrupt institutions, and where nature reigns mightily over humanity—a timely message for our current era of climate collapse and political upheaval. Brimming with political intrigue and love triangles around characters based on Percy Shelley and scandal-dogged poet Lord Byron, the novel also broaches partisan dysfunction, imperial warfare, refugee crises, and economic collapse—and brings the legacy of her radically progressive parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, to bear on present-day questions about making a better world less centered around “man.” Shelley’s second major novel after Frankenstein, The Last Man casts a half-skeptical eye on romantic ideals of utopian perfection and natural plenitude while looking ahead to a greener future in which our species develops new relationships with non-human life and the planet.

It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die. Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or less: he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

On a small island in a remote corner of northwest Scotland lies Maundrell castle, owned by its wealthy namesake family for centuries—until now. Edwina Nunn is shocked to learn a relative she never heard of has bequeathed the castle and its land to her. What awaits Edie and her teenage daughter, Neve, is even more startling, for the castle is home to a multitude of ghosts. Yet there’s a strange beauty in the austere architecture and the eerie, bloody waters of Loch na Scáthanna, the Lake of Shadows. Beguiled by a frightened ghost who gazes longingly out of the castle’s windows, Edie and Neve are drawn to the legends shrouding the island and the mystery of the Maundrell Red—a priceless diamond that disappeared decades before. Is the gem really cursed, and the cause of the family tragedies that have all occurred on Samhain—Scottish Halloween? As Samhain approaches once more, Edie and Neve race to peel back the dark secrets entwining the living and the dead—a twisted story of bitter cruelty and hidden love—or they will become another Maundrell tragedy trapped in the lonely hours . . .

Tiernan de Haas doesn’t care about anything anymore. The only child of a film producer and his starlet wife, she’s grown up with wealth and privilege but not love or guidance. And when her parents suddenly pass away, she knows she should be devastated. But she’s always been alone, hasn’t she? Jake Van der Berg, her father’s stepbrother and her only living relative, assumes guardianship of Tiernan. Sent to live in the mountains of Colorado with Jake and his two sons, Noah and Kaleb, Tiernan quickly learns that these men now have a say in what she chooses to care and not care about anymore.