A daydreamer and a bit of a lost cause, Rey loves stories. Whether they're book shaped or you can see them on a screen, a story always hides in the corners of her mind. She's working on a few stories of her own, always accompanied by her trusty cat.
I remember the first time I saw this cover at the bookstore earlier this year. I could’ve sworn it spoke to me, and it’s actually quite fitting that the first thing that came into my mind back then was the infamous “Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?” quote. Because, much like the 2015 horror film, The Witch, Irene Solà’s novel promised me a dark, gothic descent into the macabre. And at its center? A deal with the devil.
I’m pleased to say that I definitely got what I wanted from this novel. In I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness, we get the classically gothic crumbling manor full of ghosts. We see generations of women struggle with a legacy of violence and horror, partly because of their curse, but also because of the men that they have encountered. The women of Mas Clavell may be indebted to the darkness, yet some of them find comfort and pleasure there because the outside world, the violence of men, can be much worse than a curse.
So I did live deliciously when I was reading it.
This is what makes this such a must-read. It’s a book that dissolves the boundaries between life and death to paint the portrait of a family of women who have made their home in the dark. Which, as it turns out, can be quite luminous as well.
I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness by Irene Solà
There is a remote farmhouse over by the Guilleries, a mountain range in Catalonia, known as Mas Clavell. Only women live there, and its inhabitants are preparing a feast for one of their own. Are they celebrating her parting? Are they welcoming her home? Bernadeta lies in her deathbed, and all the women who’ve lived and died in the house are waiting for the inevitable over the course of one day. This is a polyphonic novel, told through the voices of the living and the dead as they recount for us their lives and the darkness they encountered.
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We can easily trace this curse to its beginning, when Mas Clavell’s matriarch Joana made a deal with the devil. Then on her wedding day, she found a way to cheat said deal, ensuring the rest of the women in her family would have to deal with the consequences of her curse from that point on.
This is the kind of book that asks you to look at your own scars and question their origin. It dares to ask: what generational traumas do we carry? It is translated from Catalán by Mara Faye Lethem, and Solà incorporates plenty of her culture’s folklore into the story. She explains it in her author’s note, so I won’t dive into it here. But know that these stories and legends help create a rich tapestry that adds great depth to the novel. And it would be a mistake on my part if I didn’t mention the lyrical, descriptive language she uses to, in true gothic fashion, enrich the story when you read between the lines.
But I won’t say anymore. I want you to experience the wonder of reading this book for the first time, too. So please, come in, enter the doors of Mas Clavell, and be ready to face some ghosts. Look toward its darkness; you might just find a home in there.
English (US) · 