Many times, we readers like to ‘degrease’ long and intense books and choose a thin novel of those that you get hooked on and finish in an afternoon. I, in particular, always have short novels to carry in my bag anywhere and not carry the weight, to go on vacation and devour several books and to go down to the pool and not leave my back with the towel, the sunscreen, water… Sometimes a short novel can also serve to support your reading vocation when you have little time or are not focused on something ‘thicker’.
Whatever your reason, if you are looking for short books that are delicious and addictive, beautiful and well-written, this selection is yours. We have chosen five novels of less than 200 pages with varied themes: real events, stories, Japanese delight and a lot of motherhood appear in all these proposals that you will not be able to resist.
‘In Our Time’ (Ernest Hemingway)
Depocket In our time
This book of stories is almost a century old, the first by Ernest Hemingway, which was published in 1926. The author was only 25 years old, but who would have thought, given the strength of his words, the rhythm of his writing and the cleanliness of his prose. ‘In our time’ (Debolsillo), Superbly prefaced by Ricardo Piglia, it brings together the American’s stories in their original order – although you can read them randomly. There are fifteen short stories, among them his wonderful ‘Cat in the Rain’, and others highly recommended such as ‘Indian Camp’, ‘The River of Two Hearts’ or ‘Out of Season’. Almost all of them are about people who take a pause in their lives. And although they are generally having a good time, the sadness of returning to ordinary life creeps into their thoughts.
Pages: 192
‘Dream like trees dream’ (Brenda Lozano)
Alfaguara Dream like the trees dream
It is not an easy novel to read; The topics they deal with are hard (immigration, poverty, inequality and especially motherhood) but their prose is constantly sagacious, like that of ‘Empty Houses’ by their namesake Brenda Navarro. ‘Dreaming like the trees dream’ (Alfaguara) talks about being a mother, the desire to be one and the social pressure to do so. The lives of Gloria Felipe and Nuria Valencia are intertwined around the theft of a little girl that shocks the Mexican capital in the 1940s. Through a narrator who (in her own words) “doesn’t sing the rancheras badly.” , we witness the battle of the Miranda Felipes to recover the youngest of their members and the anguished upbringing of the Fernández Valencias to save their own girl from a potential danger that the police have not been able to stop and the media reports with the tone of a thriller.
Pages: 200
‘Of our wounded brothers’ (Joseph Andras)
Of our wounded brothers
This is a novel that tells the chilling true story of the only ‘pied noir’ executed by the French during the Algerian War. A book, winner of the Goncourt Prize – the most prestigious of French literature – that aims to put the facts in their place and, through forceful prose, recover the life of Fernand Iveton, a young communist who, in Algiers and in 1956, decides to support the FLN by planting a bomb. ‘Of our wounded brothers’ (Anagram) He emphasizes that he is a ‘pied noir’, that is, a white Frenchman born in Algeria, and that group was then massively on the side of the colonial government. The bomb is defused and he is arrested. Tough, brave and necessary.
Pages: 136
‘Suzuran’ (Aki Shimazaki)
Suzuran (Wanderings)
Shimazaki, a specialist in writing delicious pentalogies, presents ‘Suzuran’ (Tusquets), from the saga of the successful ‘Full Moon’, which in this case is about the thorny relationship between two sisters. With her beautiful, simple and light style, which she captures from the beginning, she introduces us to Anzu, a young ceramist who has just modeled a vase that she baptizes Suzuran and who maintains a quiet life by the sea. However, everything is altered when her older sister, Kyoko, announces that she has a boyfriend and that she is getting married. The truth is that the relationship between the two sisters is not very close; In reality, their personalities are almost opposites.
Pages: 184
‘Being from outside’ (Raquel Delgado)
A tribute to uprooting, a celebration of the rural world, intense prose that provides the reader with many emotional nuances… All this and much more is ‘Being from outside’ (Sixth Floor), an exquisite book of stories by Raquel Delgado – remember this name because we predict great success – around lifelong themes, such as family, motherhood, friendship, work, love… Her stories are set in everyday life, that is why they achieve the fervor of the reader, and many of them conclude that it is very easy to feel like a stranger in our own life.
Pages: 152
