Boulder by Eve Baltasar

In just two weeks, And Other Stories publishes Boulder by Eve Baltasar (translated by Julia Sanches). If you're not already familiar with Eve, she wrote the brilliant Permafrost which came out last year. After reading a proof of Boulder, Baltasar has definitely cemented her reputation as a leading writer of wry, realist, queer fiction. I loved it.

In Boulder, a ship's cook lives a solitary life at sea, wanting for nothing and taking great pride in her work. One day whilst on shore leave she meets Samsa. The two begin a passionate long-distance romance and eventually settle together in Iceland. Their relationship is written in beautiful prose; Eve Baltasar is a poet and it definitely shows. I read the first half of Boulder lying on the grass on my lunch-break and went back to work in that dreamy sort of mood after you've been away somewhere much nicer in your mind. 

I drink her like I'd been raised wandering the desert. I swallow her as if she were a sword, little by little and with enormous care.

Adapting to an anchored life, our narrator settles into the low drama of domesticity - contentedly - until Sama announces she wants a baby. 

Motherhood is of course written about in fiction with great frequency, but Boulder is a refreshing take on the subject. Our protagonist does not want children. At all. They resent it, go along with it out of love or passivity, but always at a disconnect. This isn't a story where the mother sees her newborn for the first time and everything changes. Much like Permafrost, our protagonist in Boulder is an awkwardly-shaped puzzle piece that struggles to see where she fits. Through powerful vignettes, we watch her relationship with Samsa change and deteriorate. 

Life has started to wind down. Something intangible compels me from the moment I wake up. I enter every day the way an explorer enters charted land - bored and incautious.

Boulder is a short novel, only 105 pages, but I suspect this is because Baltasar refuses to waste words. It doesn't need to be longer; every sentence is essential for emotional impact. I opened the book to find a couple of quotes and you could use the whole page. If you like lyrical slice-of-life prose and a melancholic look at relationships, I cannot recommend Boulder enough!

If you like Boulder...

Read Permafrost! And Other Stories publish fantastic books in general. I really enjoyed Fit by Sammy Wright; one of those books I casually opened at the first page because it was on the table in the staff room aaaaand.. spent the evening reading it in one go because I couldn't put it down. I've also had Oldladyvoice by Elisa Victoria on my TBR pile for ages!

If you want another short read about the death of a relationship, I recently read The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg. It starts with a woman shooting her husband, and the retraces the prior four years leading up to it. I read it on a trip to Ikea and back; Ginzburg writes the kind of pessimistic observations about older men that made me grin to myself and chuckle out loud on the tram.