Boulder: to be Alone, to be with Family.

- a novel by Eva Baltasar, translated by Julia Sanches.

A novel that honors the most-human desire to be alone even as it recognizes the beauty and grace found within an equally human desire to be a part of a family.

The topic of children- can take most divergent tones between couples. The beginning of a family to one, an end to another. Such is the case for our protagonist “Boulder”, “those large, solitary rocks in southern Patagonia, pieces of world left over after creation”, and her partner Samsa. When Samsa accepts a position in Reykjavík, Boulder, persuaded to give up her nomadic lifestyle and settle down, moves there with her and tries to settle into a landlocked life, rocked only by the swells of her passion for her lover. Several years on, Samsa is determined to have a child and Boulder hesitantly agrees. The rest of the story follows the complications this causes in their relationship and raises larger questions about the meaning of life especially in regards to procreation.

The novel is written in a poetic and briskly engaging style full of verve and insights. Boulder’s emotional isolation coupled with the poetic intensity of her sexuality makes her a striking character, unique in action and in thought, and the prose lilts in truly surprising ways as plot’s moves to familiar tropes of love and desire, dedication and alienation. The metaphor inherent in Boulder's nickname is worked into the texture of this book. She doesn't feel connected to the story of our species so becoming a mother and entering into that narrative is deeply uncomfortable for her.

The book is definitely a modern love story- global, queer, existential in its moral hierarchies- but it is also a rumination on those two most ancient of words: lover and mother.