“One more step in my journey as a fiction author, which moves between daring and conviction.” This is how Isabel Donet Sánchez refers to the publication of her first novel after collecting various works and distinctions in short fiction and essays, such as the Generalitat Women’s Fiction Prize in 2016 with ‘Les filles d’Agnés’, the Carolina by Planells de Paiporta with ‘@Karol. Com un núvol blanc m’eleve’ or the award for the best essay of 2020 for the collective work ‘Nietas de la memoria’.
As he explains, “The novel represents a turning point in my professional career. After four decades of fully practicing journalism, writing and reporting on reality, I needed to continue exploring fiction. To paraphrase the German philosopher Anna Harent, every ending contains a new beginning and I hope that Adeu, princess! is the beginning of an exciting adventure”.
In Adeu, princess! which comes from the Neopàtria publishing house, Isabel Donet brings us closer to the existential universe of three friends, where affections often overcome lies and half-truths, something that they will never recognize. A relationship that begins to intertwine in the first days of high school in a black and white society while the dictator was dying.
Milestones, such as 23-F, the ‘NO in war’, the Valencian spring or the confinement due to Covid-19, are the backdrop to lives that pass intensely and with the occasional shock. Everything changes when one of the protagonists receives a message from a man through Facebook asking her for a date. The surprise arises when she discovers that it is her first boyfriend, whom she had forgotten and erased from her memories. What will the friends be able to plot to avoid a rapprochement? They couldn’t see the boy even in paint.
Regarding the plot, Isabel Donet tells us that she wanted to build fiction from life experiences, and she has very deliberately interspersed her own experiences. “I have given my voice to some of the protagonists and to others I have lent some other experience. I have given the role to the women of a generation who were teenagers when Franco died. Who were the young women in the Transition and who were about to of finishing the race when the coup d’état of February 23. Women who were activists when society cried No to the War. Or when the streets were filled with lilac in the defense of the rights of women, the same ones who were already “mothers in the Valencian Spring, convinced that sons and daughters were the people and not the enemy. Those who were graying when the pandemic arrived.”
The Municipal Library of Benigànim will host the first of the presentations on March 7th, in an event organized by the publishing house Neopàtria and the Feminist Collective ‘Las Ganxudes’, which counts on the collaboration of the Benigànim City Council, and later various presentations are scheduled , in April, on the 11th in Alboraya at the headquarters of the Ong Menuts del Món, on the 22nd in the Castle of Alaquàs, on the 25th in Valencia at the Women’s Library, and on May 9th in the Eliana.
In the Valencian government of Botánico II, Isabel Donet has been the Director of Communication of the Second Vice Presidency. Previously, she had worked in the Congress of Deputies and for more than two decades as an editor at Canal 9 News and Ràdio Nou Programs. She began her career as a journalist in February 1984 in the Press Office of the Presidency of the Generalitat during the first and second autonomous governments. She has also collaborated as an opinion columnist in different media and specialized magazines.
