Es muy raro ver que las manos de tu madre acaricien la cara de su amante. Que le peinen la barba. Es raro tambien que los ojos que antes vigilaban todo hayan renunciado al mundo como si le dijeran: puedes seguir sin mi.
Un dia cualquiera, a finales de los anos setenta, la protagonista abrio la puerta de su casa y vio como su madre se iba en una motocicleta Harley-Davidson con su vecino: un extravagante pintor y lector de cartas zodiacales. Muchos anos despues, narra a su hija las circunstancias que llevaron a esa partida y tambien las que la precedieron en un relato que reune a tres generaciones de mujeres y casi seis decadas de acontecimientos historicos (desde los movimientos estudiantiles del 68 hasta la pandemia actual, pasando por las dictaduras y la caida del Muro de Berlin, la globalizacion y las pantallas): una mirada subversiva y feminista del pais y del mundo durante ese periodo. Una vida fuera de lo comun, sorprendente y conmovedora, pero desprovista de sentimentalismos.
Con inteligencia narrativa, sentido del humor y una vision nostalgica de un mundo que se fue, Rosa Beltran nos regala un relato intimista y deslumbrante que encontrara eco en varias generaciones de lectores que han vivido, de una forma u otra, lo que se cuenta.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
It’s very rare to see your mother’s hands caress her lover’s face. Comb his beard. It’s also rare that the eyes that once watched everything have renounced the world as if they were saying: you can go on without me.
On any given day, in the late 1970s, the protagonist opened the door of her house and saw her mother go off on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with her neighbor: an extravagant painter and reader of zodiac charts. Many years later, she recounts to her daughter the circumstances that led to that departure, and also those that preceded it, in a story that brings together three generations of women and almost six decades of historical events (from the student movements of ‘68 to the current pandemic, going through dictatorships and the fall of the Berlin Wall, globalization and screens): a subversive and feminist look at the country and the world during that period. A life out of the ordinary, surprising and moving, but devoid of sentimentality.
With narrative intelligence, a sense of humor and a nostalgic vision of a world that is gone, Rosa Beltran gives us an intimate and dazzling story that will find an echo in several generations of readers who’ve lived, in one way or another, what is being told.
