Bruno Blog

I have always liked love stories, with or without a happy ending. Love is something that always works and that is why it is one of the main plots in many of the novels we read.

This week is special, not only because I am in love with the novel I want to present you but also because it is the first novel by a new author, José Antonio Lucero, who will see his dream of publishing come true. When we met him, he came all the way to Barcelona to sign the contract with the agency and to see us face to face, things we could do before the pandemic and that we miss now, I was touched to see the special sparkle in his eyes when we explained everything that had happened to his novel since it came into our hands. It was a special meal because you could see his excitement and his eagerness for the publication day for LA VIDA EN UN MINUTO, his second novel, although his first with us and with Penguin Random House, under the Ediciones B imprint. The pandemic forced the book to come out later than planned, and it has taken us all a long time to hold on to that illusion, but this week is the week of the publication of this very special novel, with a wonderful cover and a story that will not leave readers indifferent.

LA VIDA EN UN MINUTO is the story of two young people who flee Madrid in the years after the Civil War. Julita is an upper-class girl who does not want to follow the guidelines imposed by her family and Daniel is a boy from the suburbs who is running away from his past in the war. United by the force of destiny, the two young people will coincide in a long journey on the express from Madrid to La Coruña, fleeing from what others have planned for them. There they will get to know each other, and their complicity will be born, without knowing that the train is headed for a catastrophe that will change their lives forever.

The minute it takes for two eyes to cross. LA VIDA EN UN MINUTO rescues a sadly unknown episode of the post-war period, the tragedy of a train crash that claimed hundreds of victims and was silenced by the Franco regime’s press. It does so to show us that love and life can sometimes be born in the rubble.

A great historical novel for a wide audience and one that deserves to have the success that both publishers and I believe it should have. A silenced event, a love story like those of ROMEO AND JULIET or JACK and ROSE in Titanic. Those great stories that thrill us all until the end.

Every year more than 400,000 minors disappear in the United States of America, according to FBI data, and in Spain 80% of the 16,000 people who remain unaccounted for by the police are minors. Chilling numbers have worsened during 2020, probably due to the pandemic, rising to 21%, according to the ANAR foundation (Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk). Many of these cases are voluntary runaways caused by violence, fear, or simple adolescent rebellion, but what about non-voluntary disappearances? Do we devote enough time and resources to investigating them?… This is how the article published in Diario Marca about Irene R. Aseijas‘s novel EL CHICO DEL CARTON DE LECHE began, which I read in an afternoon and which left me with a very good impression. However, I did not get any of the big, conventional publishers to buy it, perhaps because of its atypical structure, mixing reality and fiction, it’s not the typical novel and it’s also very short, but it caught me, as I think it can catch many readers who are interested in these unsolved cases, in those who are interested in what many seem to want to ignore. The author uses the case of Etan Patz, whose disappearance made headlines in the United States in 1979. Etan, who was only seven years old, disappeared in the Soho neighborhood where he lived with his parents and his brother, when he went to pick up the bus to go to school. It was the first day he did it alone, and he did not return. His disappearance had such an impact on American society at the time that Etan’s face even appeared on milk cartons to help find him. He became a myth for missing children all over the world.

Irene mixes reality and fiction by explaining real cases from different places and times. With a journalistic voice she relates real cases that are not closed and that are mixed with the plot of the book, which is the thread of the novel that drags us to pay attention to the THEME of the disappearance of minors without a trace, and that most of the time they are cases that are not solved. Irene considers that we are too tolerant with the disappearance of minors and with this novel she tries to put the spotlight on this subject so that the reader can judge and draw his or her own conclusions. A short novel, but well measured, different, but with meaning, and with a clear purpose: do we look the other way when we cannot explain what cannot be explained? A very interesting reflection for this novel which, without being a typical novel, can capture the reader and force him or her to reflect intensely on something that is a reality, although we would really like it to be fiction.

So, I present to you a writer I love and for whom I will continue to fight for, because she has talent and the gift of knowing what she wants. Congratulations, Irene, and thank you, Alejandro Pérez, for giving us the opportunity to publish an unusual but brave novel, with an intelligent structure and very well written, and to read it with the same eyes as mine, without prioritizing the how and understanding the why.

The Elvis Riboldi series marked a very beautiful time for me, as I was able to share the reading with my son. Every night before going to bed we read two chapters of Elvis aloud. He read one and I did the next one, and it was really funny. Elvis is a hyperactive, restless, and adventurous 12-year-old who is always getting in trouble, but he always does it by mistake. A child who does not call out for trouble, but trouble always follows him. His best friend, Boris, gifted and an expert in everything, is always by his side, sometimes putting up with the bad jokes he makes. He is addicted to inventions, and Emma is his classmate, with whom he has a good friendship, although Elvis lacks touch with her. The three of them are the main characters in the story, together with Elvis’ father, Professor Pinkerton, the father of the Lagunilla, the typical show-off child, and Mr. Lugosi, a pre-retired hippie neighbour of Elvis, who always offer them his help.

Funny adventures on two reading levels so that the child and the adult can laugh together. Where the usual topics are dealt with, such as friendship, relationships with adults and the concerns of adolescents, but from the point of view of humor. The series hooks from beginning to end, without falling into educational purposes, although it has them, but it expresses them in the way that today’s children like to learn things. It is highly recommended to get to know this character and his gang through books, but for those who find it harder to read, now you can also find him on the screen every afternoon at 19:40 in Super3 channel, and I am sure that if you like the series you will be happy to read the books, published by La Galera, and share Elvis’ freakish adventures with the family.

The series has been translated in France (Hachette), Italy (Sironi Editore), Portugal (Porto Editora), Turkey (Ideal Kitap), Poland (Czarna Owieczka), Slovenia (Kud Sodobnost), Latvia (Zvaigzne ABC Publishers) and the Czech Republic (Mlada Fronta). We would very much like to continue expanding countries with a series that, like the DIARY OF WIMPY KID, has been able to sell more than 100,000 copies in Spain, and is now reaching the screens.

Are you up for it?

I especially like today’s blog because I am presenting you all with an author who is more than known to many, but who, in the agency, and with Catalan as her main language in writing, is one of a kind. She is Laia Fàbregas and her novel NO ESCRIURÉ LA TEVA HISTÒRIA published by Empúries gets us off to a very good start this January, literally speaking. Laia transports us into an unknown and unusual America, and I must confess that I did not like novels about the old America until I got into this one.

The novel begins with a man lying on a secondary road. He has just had a traffic accident with his motorbike. As the story progresses, we learn that his name is Dylan Garcia and that he is a debt collector. His story unfolds in the immediate present: Donald Trump is president of the United States and the coronavirus is just beginning to distress the population. Dylan lives and works in Pasadena, but is very active around the Salton Sea, a Californian lake. In parallel to Dylan’s story – we will soon discover that he was not alone on his motorbike, but with a woman called Sarah, who has left him there and we will eventually know how the circle closes – we will discover the adventures of the Pont family, especially John and Shirley. John is the youngest of four brothers from Oklahoma who must leave the family farm and go to work for others after their father drowned in debt and they lost their cotton farm. At the new farm where they go to work, he will eventually meet his wife – the farmer’s youngest daughter – and when they marry they will go north the country and settle down on their own and prosper. All this takes place just before the Great Depression.

The stories of Dylan and the Pont family run parallel. Laia tells of two opposing journeys, the Pont’s journey from Oklahoma to California in search of a better future and Dylan’s journey into his past, to discover his identity. The dust that is forcing John and his family to leave for California is also the dust that is changing life in this area of California, as if the whole Pont family and their descendants were marked by this climate. In short, a history of American misery.

A very structured novel with very well-defined characters and an efficient narrative that gives the readers confidence by creating constant fear, which makes them want to continue reading without stopping to see if any of the characters are successful in their situation. Congratulations, Laia, for this consolidation as an author after having already published 4 novels. We are in a moment of dust, but narratives like yours make us see that we must continue walking.

These atypical holidays are over. We have all done what we could to maintain this difficult balance of taking care of ourselves and others without anyone dying of sorrow, of prevention without becoming a pest, and trying not to lose hope for anything, although, for me, it has become complicated. Yesterday, on the Three King’s day, to be able to see the faces of the children with that same illusion as always, has been one of the few good things of this so-very-strange Christmas. They know there is a virus, but they believe in magic and that it can do everything, and so it should. How I would like to be a child again and continue living in this fantastic world! This magic can be sustained by books, which through their pages allow us to sink into their fantastic worlds and allow us to live the different adventures of the characters we can most identify with and even with those we cannot. What would we do without books? I cannot imagine, and they have been, once again, the ones that have made me return to work with desire and illusion.

Yesterday, Maria Barbal, author of the agency, which I admire since I read Pedra de Tartera at school, won the Josep Pla award with the novel Tàndem, which will be published next February 3^rd, which is wonderful. It is a novel that tells us about happiness, and how its two protagonists must get rid of everything that has them trapped and recover their spontaneity to be able to love themselves and conquer the joy of the present. The protagonists realize that they can look at the world in a different way and give themselves that opportunity to live fully by deciding to start over and pedal together in tandem. An absolutely magnificent story, human and one of the best novels I have read in a long time.

We have begun the year in a strong way, with the right foot, and with a prestigious prize like the Josep Pla received by a great author, so I strongly cross my fingers so that what has begun well, ends in the same way, or better.