Without abandoning the topic that concerns us in recent weeks, today we have to talk about a sensational book. Neus Canyelles (Palma. 1966) recounts with extraordinary poetic force the mourning for her mother, her loneliness as her daughter, and her grief over the illness of her father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. I think that Canyelles’ last three books – Les millors vacances de la meva vida, from 2019, about a psychiatric admission, Authorized Autobiography, an immersion in personal history, from 2021, and now this Milady – are very serious things and not I understand why they have not had greater recognition – not with awards that, you will forgive me, usually have a dry straw component – ??but rather the real recognition of reading and the appreciation of readers. From a greater number of them. Milady is a book that stands out a lot in the current panorama of our literature, due to its human density, concept and language.
It is written with great freedom, without recipes. It is articulated as a notebook that allows the author’s intimacy to be shared. It is dramatic – tragic –, tender, it provokes a smile, it makes you think, it invites you to contemplate and pity and opens the door to identify with the story, without any exhibitionist facility or concessions to pornographic sentimentality. Faced with so many books full of reproaches of a spoiled child, Canyelles tells a few truths: that the comfortable and sober life of a childhood in the sixties gently swung the children in a world that was disappearing very slowly; that daily life, if it is good, is the best; that he does not write because he believes that her mother has nothing exceptional or that she deserves a book, but because she is her mother. And he mounts these ideas on two essential thoughts that I quote in his own words: “Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if my mother is going to be happy, if she is happy with her life” and “Write these paraules that don’t interest anyone.” none I don’t even know if it’s of any interest to me. But if I don’t write to them I will die.” It is a book that gives and gives a lot.
Milady reconstructs small episodes from her daughter’s childhood, her mother’s maturity and her final years, after her eighties. The pages about the girl’s cures for her sick mother, her last visit to her father, who does not recognize her, are wonderful. When she tells the joke she plays on her mother: she appears dressed as a nurse with a cap with a red cross and calls herself Polita, while she treats his swollen legs and a horrible ulcer. It is an extraordinary moment. The portrait of the mother who became fond of Nintendo when she was very old transmits emotion and truth. The scene in which she visits a seventies boutique – Magali – to buy seasonal clothes, how she combs her hair and gets ready to go out, the atmosphere of the establishment that reminded me of the Juanita del Poblenou boutique, which is currently occupied by the Nollegiu bookstore. , it’s another great moment. How she describes the small world, feminine and masculine, of the bathroom, with the Moana soap and the small three-section closet with a mirror with the father’s makeup and shaver. Only Mercè Ibarz and Biel Mesquida have written portraits of the mother that can be compared.
As a professional reader I am not used to so much feeling and beauty, without a shadow of affectation. Everything is reconstructed and written with a hardness of steel and a soft touch, the characteristics that Canyelles attributes to the beach of his childhood. A whirlpool takes away happiness. And there are the painkillers, the anxiolytics, the distant daughter, a secret love relationship that broke up, the stay in the sanatorium. The feeling that moving forward that friends and acquaintances recommend – “t’has de distrure”, “Ves-te’n Anton, que el que es que ja es compon” – implies dying inside.
Milady, I liked it very, very, very much. I recommend it to you with enthusiasm and, if necessary, with a shout that amounts to a call to order.
