Bruno Blog

This book is, once again, special to me, because I’ve got a personal story with the author and this turns it into one of those that adds up to your life. To me, working with Alba hasn’t been work, but a huge pleasure —meeting her has been one of the most magical things that have happened to me in the past few months. When I received an e-mail signed with the name ‘Hope’ —which already raised my interest—, I thought that it was a person that had many things to say. And, precisely, that’s what happened. Even though we receive many e-mails from authors that want us to help them with their manuscripts, we have to reject them because we cannot take that much work: we wouldn’t be helpful to them, on the contrary. However, Hope’s mail caught my attention and I went to her blog to read what she wrote: I discovered a fresh voice, different and solid, that made me go to the city of Blanes, to her house, in order to meet her. That’s not what I usually do, but my instinct told me to ‘help’ her make her dream come true. However, Hope is the pen-name of Alba Saskia, a 25-year-old girl who had already written a novel about overcoming personal struggles, and had already earned an open door to the publishing world, as it had been shortlisted for the Planeta Award. They also saw, like me, that behind that novel there was a unique voice, different and very strong.

Alba suffers from a disease that only 80 people over the world have: The Brown Vialetto Van Laere Syndrome, a strange neurodegenerative sickness. But she smiles, she’s a strong and happy woman, with many illusions who led her to write CON UN PAR DE ALAS (already in bookstores). She started to write to be active, because she lost some of her hearing due to her disease, was admitted to the hospital and couldn’t even walk nor eat. Her blog Infinity Hope saved her, along with the unconditional support from her family, which never fails you and is always there, either for better or for worse. Therefore, Alba wrote a wonderful blog and, later on, she dared to write this novel, which was selected among the hundreds of originals that are sent to the Planeta Award and that the editor Lola Gulias couldn’t let go. Nonetheless, Alba let me help her in this journey and, although she had already entered this business, she trusted us and the job we do. After that meeting, unforgettable to me, at her place in Blanes along with her sister —who is a beautiful person and was pregnant at the moment. She even baked us some delicious biscuits to make us feel like home!—, we were all there, my father and even my son, who came with me (and he never does, but everything happens for a reason). This meeting was special for the three of us, and I hope that it also was it for Alba. Now it’s when the long-run race starts, and I hope we can get many readers from all over the world to read this story.

It isn’t a self-help story, but a story about overcoming your own struggles, for all of us who believe there’s always hope. This is Lía’s story, who after living in Tarifa a heart-wrenching love story with Hugo, comes back to Barcelona heartbroken. Her friend Manu welcomes her in and gives her thirty days to put herself back together. In the meantime, Perpetua, Lía’s mother, unaware of her daughter’s drama, keeps sending her letters to Tarifa whilst believing she’s still there. The unconditional help from Perpetua and Manu will be crucial so that Lía can start a new life, especially when María, and old friend with whom she shared years of study in a ballet school, appears and becomes the bridge to build a professional future doing what she loves: dancing. And Marcelo, a handsome water polo player, will be ready to accompany her to this new dance that is her life.

Sometimes, it seems like everything is going wrong, the sky becomes grey and there’s no way we can see the light of the sun once again, but with this novel, where friendship has a key role and, also, the passion to pursue a dream is really present, Alba manages to convey that if you want to, you can do it. That we must never lose hope. That if you do what you want and what you feel, you get where you want to. For this reason, this novel is for any reader, because it brims with HOPE, which is what Alba has tattooed on her skin, and she deftly portrays that in this novel, so well-written, and with such a strong voice, that it won’t leave you indifferent. She’s not ‘another’ writer, but the discovery of a new voice. Congratulations, Alba, for getting to this point, for having let me accompany you in this special adventure in which we’ve just started to spread our wings, because I hope that we can fly together far away, like you deserve, with the soundtrack of the song by Diego Torres, which always makes me think of you.

(In Spanish, the title of this blog post refers to the song by Diego Torres ‘Color Esperanza’)

There are still ads on TV of that trip that you could not do this summer, pictures of seaside villages, succulent hotels that make me feel longing for the holidays, while autumn is already knocking hard on the door. It is beginning to get colder, the first rains have already fallen, and the day is getting shorter and shorter and the sun, looser. But that feeling of nostalgia is positive, since it means I’ve spent a great summer, which is true, and that although the fall is not my favorite season, I know that good things are coming, because life has the color of the attitude with which you live, and I chose to see it green, the color of hope. A color that transmits calm and peace, but that does not make you lose the will to fight for things, or the illusion for every little step that you can take forward. That’s why, reading Francesc Miralles‘ new novel, UN RAYO DE ESPERANZA (a ray of hope), published by Plataforma Editorial, has been the icing on the cake.

It is a beautiful novel, where the characters live sadness, because life is not always happy, but they know how to extract the beauty out of this feeling and turn it into something positive. A poetic novel that gives you the keys to get away from situations that seem to be on the edge but they are not, no matter how we feel about them. And that novel gives you that glimmer of hope that we all need ever to convince us that if we want to, we can. Haven’t you ever wondered what you would take with you to a desert island? I’m sure you did, but here the question is: WHAT WOULD YOU SAVE FROM THE FIRE IF YOU COULD SAVE SOMETHING? Complicated and simple at the same time, we do not talk about people, but of one thing, material or not. The character realizes, on the last page, what she would save, and I can only say that I cannot agree more with her but, if you can to find it out, you will have to read this novel that comes straight from the heart, a heart like Francesc Miralles’ one, and we all know that is a guarantee of humility, humanity, and that is big.

Congratulations my friend, for that new novel with which we learn to be better and stronger in a world where nothing is perfect, in which we live very good moments but also very bad and inevitable ones, in which we suffer many disappointments, especially from people you wouldn’t expect … but so is the human kind, and we have to learn to live with this saddest part of life, without forgetting, though, that the most important thing is to change things up. Because if you want, you can do it. Each step is a challenge but, without challenges we would be dead, that’s why we have to look forward and keep on with a hopeful smile that, for me, cannot have another color than green.