The back cover of Carolina Lozano’s new book, MEMORIAS SALVAJES, could have been reading my thoughts today. It opens like this: There are moments in life when all is turned upside-down. I am sure it has happened to you too. Everything seems to be going smoothly, and all of a sudden your world collapses and you need to start looking at it all through different eyes. Some… wilder eyes.

I couldn’t believe it, because this is what truly happened to me last week, and I didn’t know how to face the world until I read this back cover. I don’t know if ‘wilder’ would be the appropriate term, but I can assure you that life lectures you, and out of those we need to learn without a doubt.

Carolina’s novel is an example of overcoming. The world of the main character is torn to pieces, but someone helps her from the other side and tells her that keeping secrets is way easier than what it seems and that the most difficult thing is finding the moment to relieve them. Carolina manages to immerse us in a story full of emotion, but above all, humanity:

A. Is going through a really delicate moment after her boyfriend, Connor, breaks up with her. She is left devastated, but reading the memoirs of her aunt Violet, almost a stranger up until then, will help her overcome the rupture.

This memoir is explicitly dedicated to her. Written for and by her. Violet wanted to write down all of her craziness, mistakes, all her life so that her future niece could learn from them

Violet died aged 24 after waking up from a three year old coma – which she fell into after a fatal car crash. Violet, fully aware that even if she had awakened would not survive –her body was rejecting her new kidney- begins to take conscience about her life coming to an end and that only a few days separate her from death.

Anorexia, infidelities, family fights, rivalry between sisters, adolescence and love. That was Violet’s life who, before dying, accepted her sisters wish, the big reveal the novel holds deep in its pages up until the end.

A book about overcoming with a great soul so that every teenager, and those who are not so young, can find our own voice and feel identified.