Boulder

I waited six months—six!—for my library hold on this to come due, and was promised a critically acclaimed queer novella with beautiful prose. Well, this is definitely a book that's been praised, but now that I've read it, inexplicably so. Seeing so many people laud Eva Baltasar's writing makes me feel like the kid in the Hans Christian Andersen story being forced to ask if they're the only one who's noticed that the emperor is in the nip.

There are always allowances to be made for a work in translation, and knowing that the translator's choices may be an infelicitous rendering of the author's original phrasing, or that something may just not translate well from one language to another. (e.g. at one point here the narrator says she show more fucks her girlfriend with a strapless strap-on. I mean, that's just a dildo to me? But maybe the original Catalan has a certain je ne sais quoi that doesn't come across here.)

But Baltasar's prose is bad. It's bad. It's laboured and pretentious, riddled with godawful similes and metaphors that were constantly making me stop to parse them and then puzzle over how they either made no sense, or kind of made sense but weren't actually true when you thought about them at all. By the time I got a chapter or so into this, I'd been reduced to sending snippets of it to friends, agog that what I was reading had been published and praised and utterly disdaining it but also determined to slog through to the end because, again, I'd waited six fucking months to read this. Snippets like:

"Fucking her with a strap-on is like waking up summer and drowning it in its own swelter, it’s tossing her way up high and fighting the undertow that pulls me under before I give in to the quiet." I must have missed that page in the Kama Sutra.

A random woman whom the narrator sees in the bar "has the same powerful complexion of most Icelanders, as if her body held an every-burning flame in which she forged her courage." What?

"We’re going to have a massive problem if she ever brings home one of those how-to manuals. The kind you can pulp to death but still won’t strain through the mesh of our love." Huh? I feel like I've got a concussion.

"She reminds me of an abandoned warehouse suddenly beset by trucks come to unload their freight. Bricks, mortar, cement, beams, insulation, slabs." This, obviously, is a metaphor about taking nutritional supplements.

"The streets crack through the vellum of ice that formed overnight and emerge one by one, like a flotilla of submarines, wherever traffic begins to form." I've touched a lot of vellum in my time, and thus found myself saying "the vellum of ice" aloud to myself in various different tones and registers to try to understand what the hell she was trying to convey here but still ???

"Personality is a dress made of scraps [... that] will never ever define me. [...] The nakedness I conceal is what makes me a person." So you're not your defined by your character, but by your biology? A wild, dare I say TERF-adjacent, statement for someone to make, especially when that character has spent pages and pages mocking and deriding her partner's pregnant body.

"There’s so much naked skin, a fantastic pulp that radiates light, a migratory brilliance that spills across the room like sun through a woodland." Is pulp a word that we'd use to talk about human skin that hasn't been physically assaulted? Does pulp generally radiate light? How does it radiate light in a migratory manner?

"Responsibility isn't particularly heavy and doesn't need to be held; it sutures itself to the brain and contaminates the blood with its narcotic fluids. Blood. Necessary and mortal. The things we pour into it are more nourishing than bodies: the verb that resuscitates it every day, the impulse that moves it, the fire, the spark, the fervor." It's like a Rupi Kaur poem had a baby with a thesaurus.

I could go on, but you get my point.

And all of that even before the fact that the POV character is a lesbian who's written indistinguishably from a conservative straight misogynist husband in an American sitcom (pregnant bitches be crazy, amirite?), the core relationship around which the book hangs is gestured at rather than shown, and what commentary the book contains around motherhood, autonomy, queerness, etc, is facile and clichéd. Sloppy pseudo-intellectualism and emotionally shallow to boot.

Nominated for an International Booker Prize? And I can see the emperor's bollocks. show less

Is our existence meaningless without giving birth? Is motherhood (or parenthood) the main purpose of our lives? And are we less than human if we don't have an innate maternal instinct? Boulder presents us with these questions and confronts us with the stifling possibility of motherhood from the perspective of a couple in Iceland.

Boulder leads a nomadic life. She has little interest in possessions or social obligations and holds her freedom as the most important part of her existence. That is until she meets Samsa, who bestows on her the name "Boulder" — this meeting propels her into a passionate, sensual relationship that completely shifts her life. She settles down, giving up her job on a ship and her nomadic lifestyle. She shrinks show more herself and cuts a Samsa-shaped hole in her freedom to accommodate her.

This coexistence is shaken when Samsa declares she wants a baby. Boulder has no time to think — it is an immediate yes or a no. Not wanting to lose Samsa, she says yes.

This changes their whole relationship. Motherhood (even the idea of an impending one) changes Samsa, and this starts the gradual estrangement of the two. The baby slowly takes over Samsa, leaving Boulder alone. And we witness the chaos in the mind of a disillusioned Boulder as she experiences the loss of Samsa and the new responsibilities of motherhood when she couldn't even grasp the idea of being a mother.

My favourite part of the book was the writing; it is perhaps one of the only books (as far as my memory goes) that extensively incorporates sex in it without it being crass and putting me off. The writing is tender and rather sensual. It is occasionally funny, but the tone is deeply sad and unsettling. It is laden with poetic metaphors, engaging you and making you experience the range of emotions that our narrator goes through— from the all-consuming desire for Samsa to the eventual claustrophobia. show less

I talk about women without counting myself among them. I'm not a woman. I am the cook on an old merchant ship, sharpening knives one edge at a time.

This was powerful. A very interesting portrait of a relationship changed by motherhood from the "other mother" perspective. I didn't necessarily like the protagonist, but it didn't make me enjoy this less. Great style, very sharp prose (and translation).

4.5⭐️

*Shortlisted for The International Booker Prize 2023*

“Life develops without overwhelming me, it squeezes into every minute, it implodes; I hold it in my hands. I can give anything up, because nothing is essential when you refuse to imprison life in a narrative.”

We meet our unnamed protagonist, loner content with moving from job to job, while she waits for a merchant freighter on the Chilean coast where she takes up the job as a cook, perfectly happy with the monotonous, predictable routine while traversing the South American coast. When she meets Samsa, a Scandinavian geologist, she trades in her itinerant lifestyle for a relatively more domestic arrangement in Reykjavik where Samsa gets a job.

“She doesn’t like my show more name, and gives me a new one. She says I’m like those large, solitary rocks in southern Patagonia, pieces of world left over after creation, isolated and exposed to every element. No one knows where they came from. Not even they understand how they’re still standing and why they never break down.”

As the years progress, “Boulder” as Samsa calls her sees herself making compromises, adjusting to life as a couple, some aspects of it more challenging than others- but prioritizing her relationship with Samsa over all she misses from her solitary life. However, the dynamic in their relationship begins to shift when Samsa expresses her desire to have a child, to have a family – a desire that Boulder does not share and a journey that Boulder is more than reluctant to embark upon. With the birth of their child, the gap between them – both in terms of physical intimacy and emotional connection - begins to broaden. Samsa’s devotion to their daughter Tinna leaves our narrator feeling lost, lonely and “in exile”. We follow Boulder as she deals with conflicting feelings of emptiness, her desire for physical connection, moments of fondness for their daughter and her need for the solitary life she has left behind.

“No emotion is more indulgent than feeling that you are intensely human. Though it can also be the most tyrannical. You are responsible for every word, and no statement is innocent.”

Boulder by Eva Baltasar (translated by Julia Sanches) is a brutally honest, unflinching yet insightful novella that takes us deep into not only the complexities of relationships – the changing dynamics, the power play- but also how we evolve as individuals in the course of the same. Narrated in the first person, and at barely one hundred pages, this is a heavy read one that will raise some important questions on how we perceive relationships, motherhood and commitment and the lengths we go to preserve those relationships we hold dear and the extent to which we are willing to lose ourselves in the interest of the same. I could not put this down. Boulder is passionate, intense and real, too real at times. You can feel the pressure building from the very first page. The author’s writing is powerful and able to convey our narrator’s suffocation and claustrophobia with skill and much emotional depth. Even though it might be difficult to sympathize with our protagonist all the while, the author allows us to understand her. It is commendable that not only does the author not resort to stereotypes but, in fact, shatters quite a few!

“Time doesn’t live outside us; it comes into being as we do. To be able to hold time in our hands— now that’s a human mission.”

I’m eager to read the remaining books in the author’s triptych. This is the second book, but all of them can be read as standalone. show less

While reading this novel, I kept having to remind myself that Boulder was not male. Clearly, Baltasar was trying to write about what it means to be a gay woman in a committed relationship. So why was I having so much trouble seeing her protagonist as gay? At bottom, I think there is nothing in her relationship with Samsa that is uniquely gay. All committed couples face similar challenges and things can unravel for lots of reasons. Notwithstanding some unique elements, the Boulder/Samsa story is pretty mundane. Their relationship begins with physical attraction, moves to routine living, and eventually proves to be too fragile to withstand the fundamental differences between the two partners.

Of course, Baltasar’s use a first-person show more narrative gives us only one perspective, so we see Boulder’s issues more clearly than Samsa’s. Boulder is a self-centered loner enjoying a nomadic lifestyle and with little desire to be part of a conventional family. Her main aim seems to be satisfying her sexual cravings. Conversely, Samsa is a dedicated professional who hears the pregnancy clock ticking. She takes to motherhood with passion and to the exclusion of Boulder. From Boulder’s perspective Samsa has excluded her from any but the most limited involvement with their child. Their relationship evolves into something neither wants. In my view, both seem selfish and essentially unlikeable.

Baltasar’s background in poetry provides a lyrical narrative filled with metaphors. The one I liked best was her choice of Boulder as the nickname that Samsa—a professional geologist— bestows on her nameless partner. It captures the essence of her personality as well as pinpoints the problem that eventually dooms their relationship. As the Paul Simon lyric goes: “I am a rock…and a rock feels no pain.” show less

To Be a Rock and Not To Roll
Review of the And Other Stories paperback edition (September 2022) translated by Julia Sanches from the Catalan language original published by Club Editor (March 2020)

Maybe it was the point of it all, but this lesbian motherhood story came across as more of a heterotypical story. The title character, otherwise nameless but nicknamed 'Boulder', is a ship's cook in Chile who becomes infatuated with geologist Samsa and then joins her in moving to Iceland when the latter gets a job offer. As Samsa begins to want a child, Boulder retreats more into avoidance and drinking sessions of Brennivín (the local Aquavit) with friend Ragnar. After a successful IVF, Samsa increasingly disassociates from Boulder who takes show more recourse in an affair. Boulder does take some joy in occasional outings with the baby when Samsa allows it. Then there is a final crisis.

Setting the story in Iceland added to its atmosphere of nordic depression and must have been meant as a metaphor. The writer Eva Baltasar is known primarily as a poet, although this is the 2nd of a triptych of novels, preceded by Permagel (2018) (translated into English as Permafrost (2018)) and followed by Mamut (2022) (not yet translated into English).

Other Reviews
Review at Pop Matters Spanish Poet Eva Baltasar tackles the Lesbian Parenting Novel with ‘Boulder’ by Rhea Rollman, January 12, 2023.

Review at the New York Times She is a Rock, She is an Island by Greg Mania, August 21, 2022.

Trivia and Links
Boulder is longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Award. You can read further about the longlist of 13 books here. The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday, April 18. The winning title will be announced on Tuesday, May 23, 2023.

You can read an interview with Julia Sanches about translating Boulder at the Above The Treeline website here. show less

Another ok if underwhelming for me International Booker shortlister, we have here a novella that supports the old truth of “don’t agree to have a child just to save a relationship.” Samsa from Iceland feels a strong desire to have a child. Her long term partner, a Chilean woman she nicknames Boulder for her solidity in standing apart, feels a strong desire not to. Samsa, as a well-read person can foresee, changes greatly after the baby enters the scene, at least from Boulder’s point of view, and the relationship ends.

I don’t see how a reader could feel anything much about the troubles in and finally the ending of this relationship, as Baltasar puts scant effort into bringing it to life despite putting us there from its show more beginning. With little apparent in common, all that seems to hold them together on these pages is lust, which I wouldn’t think is often sufficient glue for a decade long relationship in which one partner leaves their home continent and reluctantly agrees to have a child together.

It’s not really about the relationship, then, it’s about the effect of motherhood on women. And it’s not the same for everyone, naturally. Boulder, who guards her personal freedom fiercely, often losing jobs for not working well with others, sees it very negatively:

The moment she was inseminated, Samsa changed. The feeling I had was one of unfamiliarity - an anxious, nomadic unfamiliarity that came from Samsa. It took over her while at the same time soaking through her and turning her radioactive… motherhood is the tattoo that defines you, brands life on your arm, the mark that impedes freedom.

You know what they say… when you’re associating pregnancy with being turned into a cockroach, you aren’t a fan. And of Samsa’s motherly love for the child, rather than being something positive, to Boulder “it’s more like a parasite that has usurped her and now rides her in victory.” Boulder sees Samsa’s personal freedom as something being taken away by this love and connection.

Samsa on the other hand seems to be pretty happy with motherhood. She enjoys being a mother, breastfeeding, going to infant swim classes, meeting up with other new mothers, co-sleeping with the baby, spending her days with her. Her career meanwhile seems to have lost its appeal, as has having sex with Boulder.

This all leads Boulder at the novel’s end to think in regards to Samsa that “I look at her and see a woman who has sacrificed her own self-worth for the well-being of a child”. Which seems entirely unkind and wrong to me: Samsa seems rather to have increased her sense of self-worth, as she’s found more personal meaning in raising a child than in a career or the freedom of being child-free. Boulder is unable to comprehend such a choice improving one’s sense of self-worth; she completely fails to understand Samsa.

In contrast to Samsa’s happiness, Boulder informs us that “I don’t believe in this island and I don’t believe in happiness, or in relationships, or in children, or in God.” I can believe that her character has that dispiriting outlook; I have a harder time believing these two characters stayed together for so many years to get to the events of this story! show less