Les calces al sol by Regina RodrÃguez Sirvent (Puigcerdà , 1983) is one of those books that makes its way with the help of a provocative title, a flashy cover and multiplier word of mouth. The title warns that, although the novel deals with topics that we may have read in books by other authors, the direct and self-deprecating treatment is nothing like it. The problem of the protagonist and her literary psychoanalysis is called showing her panties or hanging them on a clothesline, for the readers to see. The cover makes me think of an anecdote from Ferran Torrent. When he was about to publish Un negro con un saxo, he was asked what image he wanted on the cover. “A black man with a saxophone!” The friend who told me about it tried to convince him that if there was a black man and a saxophone in the title, the image had to be, for example, a girl in an evening dress. There was no way. I want to say that the cover of RodrÃguez Sirvent’s book is redundantly simple.
No one ever knows why the virtuous circle is created that takes off a book like a rocket. But I think that in this case indulgence has a lot to do with it. Les calces al sol is a comedy about two classic themes: escaping from our small world to live a great adventure and communication problems in a foreign country, linked to learning English. Years ago, Carme Riera transposed her personal experience into a novel – L’estiu de l’anglés – which recreated the atmosphere of the Gothic novel. Regina RodrÃguez Sirvent has taken elements of sexual comedy, stories of children and kangaroos and road movies (there’s a trip to the Grand Canyon) to make a cocktail that goes well. Starting with the story that causes Rita Racons’ trip to Atlanta based on a comic succession of lucky and bad luck: a night of horns, a radical crush, a suspense in the last year of Psychology, a friend who makes you feel bad a journey to learn English which, once there, turns out not to consist of going to class at the university but of babysitting three scoundrels, children of intellectual, successful parents, but – like everyone else – with desire to try new things.
The novel describes the environments and the people, with some good dialogue: from a party with a marijuana-laden cake, to a Presbyterian ceremony, an orgy or a school festival. There are scenes that in other hands could give rise to great tricks, which Regina RodrÃguez Sirvent makes slide like a world rally champion. There are some jokes about Catalonia and Barcelona seen by the Americans (they prepare a cake for him with the four bars made of tomato and banana), and one of the characters – who has a family connection with Coca-Cola – tells a story of Juanito , the Pinocchio de la Boqueria, who saved his life. Well, boy: it works. There are some effective scenes, of corny comedy, when Rita discovers that the master of the house’s obsession with a porn actor with a big semaler takes shape in a meeting in a hotel. She shows up, to look, dressed in camouflage. Jealousy, the reluctance to be out of place, the uncertainty, the grief over the death of the grandmother or the loss of a crazy friend who has gone to live in Seattle, the sexual desire for men and women, they are told with a light style, a voice that is not an echo and juicy details. The writing accompanies. When he portrays Samantha, a woman who has just separated and is in shock, he says that he “drains the last drops of gin and tonic with all the elegance that a vulgar gesture allows”. It is a sentence that I have noted, among many others.
With a plot thread that makes you think more of a series than a novel, the book gets a little long, but it has plenty of elements that make up for it. The main thing – freshness – has become more and more scarce in today’s world.
