Bruno Blog

It’s been a while since I’ve realised time flies. We get older, and I see how the number of divorces amongst the different groups of friends I have keeps getting bigger and bigger. It’s not good nor bad, it is simply a fact that makes me wonder whether a lifelong love story with someone is possible.

I believe there are different ways to love and there is no precise mathematical formula to know what is it that works, since I think each couple has its own way, but, reading Victor Alexander’s ELS AMANTS DE LA RAMBLA DEL CELLER  I’ve not been able to restrain myself of thinking about those old couples whom have been together their whole entire lives sharing everything. And I wonder whether LOVE, written in capitals, keeps getting bigger as a snow bubble, or whether it shifts with every step we take towards that thing we want it to be. Life as a couple is a whole world, and this novel is a solid basement to be able to face a century of life and of history greatly told by the author, knowledgeable of it, and who brings back the reader together with the rest of characters, all that happened.

Maria and Joan walk their ninety years through the Celler’s Rambla, slowly, as two lovebirds would do, observing today’s world go by, so distant from theirs, and so hostile, that it’s already falling on them without mercy, like a vulture looking for carrion. Niel, a neighbor of theirs, watches them, alerted by their kindness and vulnerability; he’s a man that, as the old lovers of the Celler’s Rambla, carries a past where pain and joy intertwine, uncontrolled, from his teenage years in Paris and an eternal unhappy love for Judit, his second wife, victim to a life full of infamy. Maria, who everyone calls Marieta, Joan has experienced a century full of war, oppression, silences, harassment…but they’ve made the time and have found strength to love their family, the theatre, opera, cinema…this life that, right when it’s reaching its end, seems to want to eliminate them before their time. ELS AMANTS DE LA RAMBLA DEL CELLER is an extraordinary story that contrasts tenderness to cruelness, and where it is shown, without any filter, the current extortions of real-estate mobbing, and it is a criticism to sexual abuses to minors.

A vignette postcard that I, personally, like, and that makes me get goosebumps by wondering if we can actually feed love and make it grow as a limitless snow bubble, but which has to, every now and then, slow down in order to keep growing.

I confess that, ever since I was a little kid, I’ve liked romantic movies and books, even those that were a tiny bit cheesy –I was addicted to romantic relationships that seemed impossible, and that always ended up being possible. Typical stories that reminded me of the classic Romeo and Juliet; love stories between two different social classes, like Pretty Woman, or the typical story about a nerdy girl who isn’t that pretty and falls in love with the bad handsome guy of her class. How many stories like that have we read and seen? We do it over and over again, because we love them and because there are many lovers of love, and these stories keep moving us.

That’s why this week I have the pleasure to recommend a novel that follows this pattern, a modern Romeo & Juliet set in our century and written by a really young author, Paula Amor, whose novel has managed to be #1 in Amazon for several weeks already. Planeta has decided to publish it under the name PEDAZOS DE TI (‘Pieces of you’) and it tells a love story that shouldn’t have been…but that it was. That kind of love that you never forget in life and that we love reading, especially in summer, when everything is amusing and full of possibilities.

Devil and Abbie shouldn’t have met, they weren’t meant for each other, but Devil owned Abbie something that could only be paid with his whole life, so when the opportunity came up, she was more than ready to claim it. Abbie, the perfect little girl with braided hair, responsible, sensible, typical and inoffensive nerd. Who would suspect her? Devil? The bad guy, of leather jacket and trousers, leader of a rock band, addicted to everything destructive, including empty relationships.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to discover this author who has written a modern West Side Story that will hook young readers who, like me, keep enjoying this kind of stories where love always wins. A light read, very summery, by someone whose dream came true when this novel was published. We hope that she can continue to do so, because she’s got magic.

We live in a world where social media is part of our lives and of our children’s. For me, I have to confess, it is a little scary, but we cannot close our eyes and do as if that didn’t exist. The thing we can do is to make our own decisions and see if we want to dive into this world, and how we want to do it. If we know how and why we want to, there shouldn’t be any problem, and relationships through the Internet don’t have to be negative. Sometimes, they can even surprise you.

The novel TODAS MIS FOTOS HABLAN DE TI (All My Photos Speak of You), by Cristina Maruri, is one of the newer bets by Ediciones B, by their new imprint Plan B, and I’m sure that anyone who enjoyed Against the North Wind, by Daniel Glattauer, and/or the movie You’ve Got Mail, is going to fall in love with this story that starts with some pictures posted on Instagram. The rest of the story has to do with the beauty in things and with our ability to click likes. Laura, the main character, writes and travels, William reads and is a photography lover, and Julles is in love. The three of them make a love triangle. Laura lives between the real and virtual world, and isn’t sure about which one to choose. One is solid and stable, and the other is all magic, like in a dream, but instead it is on the other side of the screen and through pictures that both of them post on Instagram. Can you fall in love with someone only because of what you see through their photos? Can you fall in love with someone through their writing? Who is the person behind each passion, each character?

Cristina Maruri debuts with one of the first novels about LOVE via Instagram, one of the social media most used in the past few years, and she does it with a literary and clean voice that will captivate anyone who believes in their passions, their illusions and that life is all about dreaming with open eyes. And dreams are there to make them happen and to reach them. Will Laura make it? A special novel to read this summer and live LOVE in capital letters.

The great world of the couple would make people talk a lot, and more to write too, because we have all been having dinner with friends and after-dinner conversations subject is the couple. Everyone has his particular vision and the way the topics are almost always repeated is kind of funny. The new generations seem quite different from our generation but I’m not that sure that in matter of love they also are that different. Perhaps the way we communicate has changed, before there was no WhatsApp, and all we had to say had to be face to face. That way, things were not so easy nor so difficult.

This week, we recommend a funny and non-formal book for all those who have decided to move in and live as a couple. Maybe after the summer? Or after holidays? Before, I suggest having a glance at this book published by Maeva, PEQUEÑAS IDEAS ANTES DE VIVIR EN PAREJA, so that you take note of these little details that will stop you from messing it up, if you’re warned. Loving as a couple is not easy and even less if that love is forever and 24 hours a day. Princes charming do not exist, and sharing a bed every night stops being something special, just as getting up every day to the sound of the alarm clock and with bleary faces. ‘Fighting’ for being the one that enters before in the bathroom or about who puts the dishes in the dishwasher: that really is what life together means, sharing everything, the good and the bad… That’s why this book is perfect for that particular friend who is convinced that the fact of moving in and live together will be the best thing that ever happened in her life, and I don’t say it’s not, but we must also be realistic and know that it is no bed of roses. It is better to take it with sense of humor and to read the ideas of the ‘experienced people’ and laugh with your partner and others persons about what COMMITMENT really means. And above all, take the compatibility test, which will give you many clues. Do you dare? This is a refreshing book for the summer and a special gift for anyone who wants to take that step, or has already taken it and wants to remember how it was like… Remembering is now fashionable and we all like it.