Despite her political activity, Gemma Lienas (Barcelona, ??1951) never leaves aside her literary streak. She now returns with a novel of maturity in all senses: The private life of Carmina Massot (Univers / Harper Collins, in Spanish). The protagonist is an octogenarian who is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Carmina has never been married and maintains a very special relationship with her nieces, who are also of an age, although they continue to function as those girls with whom she has been related since they were little.
But the aunt hides many secrets, a private life that she has never explained, that she has kept to herself and that now, in the last months of her life, she considers that the time has come to tell her nieces. The maiden aunt is revealed as a woman with a rich and even dangerous life, which shatters the image of an aunt that she has projected all her life.
“I wanted to write about an older woman who is losing her autonomy,” says Lienas. I think it is an issue that we have not resolved and I imagine myself losing autonomy. I thought of a character with Alzheimer’s, but he faded right away and I discarded him ”.
“So I opted for someone who faces death,” he continues. I’ve been reading about this for a long time: I imagine that, as you get older, you think about it more and more. If you manage to look death in the face, although it is painful, it gives a certain peace of mind”.
He contrasted this older Carmina with a young Carmina, who is the one who recovers the memory of her youth: “I wanted to contrast the Barcelona of 1956 with that of now. And I didn’t want it to be a dramatic novel, but very vital, as I am: a hymn to life”.
The nieces are poorly drawn: “They work like a Greek choir. Carmina refers to them as the coreutas. And to that I added an adventure plot, which is not exaggerated, thinking of one of those paintings that the Nazis plundered. And so the Nazi Léon Degrelle appeared, who lived protected by Franco without paying for his crimes.
Despite the fact that Carmina Massot is fifteen years older than Gemma Lienas, they share some things: Massot is the writer’s mother’s surname, and both one and the other are two feminine and feminist women at the same time. “I wouldn’t be able to walk on cobblestones in stilettos like she does, but I recognize that we do share some elements. She would not say that she is a feminist, because she did not yet have the concept, but she is a sovereign woman of her life”, she concludes.
Catalan version, here
