Café del Norte, Plaza Mayor de Valladolid. It is not a scene of a novel by César Pérez Gellida But it could be. The author could not choose a more appropriate place than this as a meeting point to present His new novel, “Nothing new germina” (Destination Editorial)that since last Wednesday, May 7 is already on sale and that is the continuation of “under dry ground”, with which he received the Nadal 2024 award.
Valladolid, the author’s homeland, is once again a primary scenario in the pages of This new ThrilleR expected by the most hooked readers to the plots of Pérez Gellida. In the aforementioned coffee, he welcomes us accompanied by one of his literary children, the murky protagonist of “Nothing new germina”, Sebastián Costa, made flesh, dressed in suit, vest and hype, who together with his “father” hosts in this meeting.
Both go to the Circle of Recreation, a space, which like coffee, appears in the novel. There, César Pérez Gellida is explained long and lying to talk about his new creation, born of mental scenes that he has previously generated, as confessed. “My way of writing novels does not contemplate that there is a previous script. I started writing because I had insomnia problems and to stay quietly in bed I invented a story that resumed at the point where I had fallen asleep. All I do is translate those images that I have seen many times in my head. It is the reverse process that a reader makes, which converts words into images. My only method is that one scene takes me to another scene and that scene takes me to another, etc. I let myself be guided by intuition. ”
And “Under dry ground” He started in the rural extremura of the beginning of the century, “nothing good germinates” takes a more urban dye, traveling through large cities like Madrid to culminate in Valladolid, something that is not, of course, is casual. It responds to a desire that Pérez Gellida was clear from the beginning. It cannot be more satisfied that its beloved city is already part of the imaginary of its readers: “More than a debt with my hometown or with the Valladolid, it was A debt with myself as a writer”.
The novel supposes the round closure to the darkest instincts in which Pérez Gellida Chapotea without containment. Greed, betrayal, distrust, desire, the fight against fate, the fledged, crudeness, tension, violence, unexpected twists … All of that reappears in direct prose, without anesthesia, vertiginous, which predominates in The black genre that the author works.
Blood and suspense
The Spain of the early twentieth century, the misery of those years and the disease of the so -called Spanish influenza worsighting, generate the perfect hostile atmosphere for some protagonists whose lives are equally friendly. Antonia Monterroso is qualified by its creator as “a monster”. However, Pérez Gellida wants it to be understood: “I like the reader to understand the reasons for his actions, although these do not justify them. This is to empathize, which does not mean having sympathy for the character, I do not pretend that the character of Antonia Monterros is “with the last of your shoe”, Sebastián Costa.
And why Period of the early twentieth century? The writer confesses that he, like any author, looks for contexts “that are not too much manic” and the beginning of the twentieth century is not. Pérez Gellida explains that it is a time on which there is “a certain obscurantism for two reasons. One, because with the loss of overseas colonies a phase of shame begins for our history because we fall into an economic depression and in that political division of the alternation between conservatism and progressivism. We fall into a great social crack of two faceful Spain.”
The first years of that century are perfectly portrayed with dosed and studied brushstrokes: “The authors run the risk of making a great mistake: to make The documentation phase. But this is not a historical novel, it is a thriller who has a historical setting. Once the documentation work has been done, what you have to do very well is to dose that information, know where, how and when to use it. I do it through the details. ”
It is impossible not to think that the pages of “nothing good germinates” will catch lovers of this genre when the author himself confesses that when writing it “The keyboard smelled to oxide. The smell of blood“And that“ some deaths are going to hurt the reader. My obligation is, first, try to deceive the reader, because this is a suspense thriller, and second, bother him. “
