Julieta is 11 years old. She has always been an applied girl, although her life has not been easy. She is the daughter of Guillermina, a single mother who had her at the age of 16. But now, the course has gone badly for him. He already gives it up. En la boca del lobo (Seix Barral), the latest novel by the writer Elvira Lindo, begins with the first-person narration of this girl who, after a bad school year, goes on vacation to his mother’s village, La Sabina, where he meets Emma, ??a woman who lives in the forest who will help him begin to heal some of his wounds.
The protagonist of En la boca del lobo doesn’t know how to explain what’s happening to her, but Lindo has found a way to narrate “the trauma of childhood abuse without the need to show blood”. The writer, who has always been interested in the world of children, explains the details of her new novel, aimed at adults, in this interview with La Vanguardia.
La Sabina, the town where Julieta spends her summers, is very similar to Ademús, where you spent part of your childhood. Did you want to rescue the memories of those times in the novel?
Ademús, my mother’s village, is divided into villages and hamlets. My uncles were bakers and distributed their products around the region. Everyone knew each other in the area and I have many roots there, because my childhood was very nomadic and this was the anchoring place. The people of Ademús emigrated to Valencia or Tarragona, where my father worked, who was an engineer and who placed many people from the town on the construction sites. He was very loved.
What was it like to return to the village?
When I came back to prepare the novel, a woman came and told me that she had taken care of me and my siblings as children. I kept a photo of her with the four of us. He remembered so much of me that he portrayed my personality and I was blown away. I went up to the pedania and fell in love with the place, which has incredible biodiversity and creates an atmosphere that is what I wanted for the book. Its literary possibilities are endless.
Guillermina and Emma, ??the two adult women in the novel, live thinking about finding a partner. Are women still dependent on men?
They are very different, but both are dependent. Guillermina, as a result of childhood trauma, needs a man to define her as a person. He doesn’t have a purpose in life, he can’t take responsibility for anything, he lets himself go. When such a woman is very beautiful, she is at the mercy of whoever comes first. Emma is different, she is very lazy and sexually open, she thinks she can live anywhere. He arrives in a small community and thinks that if he lets himself be carried away by pleasure there will be no consequences, but he discovers that there are, and very serious ones.
How do you create your characters?
I don’t create characters that respond to my political or social thoughts, but people who follow their own destiny, and I base them on people I’ve met, although not on anyone in particular, but on different things I’ve seen. Guillermina, for example, is destined for tragedy, because of her mixture of beauty and thoughtlessness.
You have written children’s literature and have always been interested in childhood in your work. Because?
In A corazón abierto I appear with my nine-year-old voice, and in fact, I am drawn to the helpless and innocent characters, the beings who are on the brink of danger, because someone will come to violate their innocence. I have always had empathy for people who are unprepared for the malice of the world.
How did the idea of ??tackling such a delicate issue as child abuse come about?
It came naturally, because I have two very close cases, two people with whom I have had long conversations. A victim of child abuse or neglect tells you in a whisper when she trusts you and knows you will treat her with delicacy. My purpose was to explain it silently, somehow, so that the reader can imagine it, with respect for the information that had been communicated to me in conversations so spaced out in time. They never explained specific things to me that were super delicate. I give voice to the girl to explain her pain. It was a moral obligation to convey it, to make people understand what the trauma and the wound are, but without digging, so that the blood is not seen.
How did this purpose materialize?
I found a way to tell it like a classic tale. It is a novel for adults and it is not necessary to explain everything, it can be done through omission. He could relate the fear, the trauma. When something is explained very crudely, the victim who hears it returns to the place from which he wants to leave. This is revictimization, which is why you need to narrate carefully, since someone is listening or reading you.
Can the wounds caused by the abuse suffered by minors be healed?
You won’t get rid of this wound, but you can have a life and this is the message: don’t be a victim all your life.
How is it possible for mothers not to see that their children are being abused when it happens at home?
Mothers usually protect their children, but there are cases of helplessness. The drama that Julieta suffers is that she is left helpless. But the curse can be broken. Juliet is not doomed to be a bad mother, quite the opposite.
