Sunday at Zenda. Sunday of great hits. Sunday, in this case, featuring The Dry Years, the first novel by the Galician screenwriter and journalist Raquel Zas (Lugo, 1989), published by the publishing house Temas de Hoy. Through a protagonist who returns to her childhood home after the life she had built is upended, Zas faces one of the most relevant questions when trying to understand how we currently weave our social life with our desires: the immense difficulty in guessing which practices we adopt out of cultural inertia and which truly depend on our personal agency—if such a thing can be spoken of in purer terms. The result is an ethically complex novel, which places the reader in an uncomfortable position by steering them away from the rails they have grown accustomed to following.
The publisher notes, in reference to the book: “
Clara returns to her parents’ town after a breakup that leaves her without the life she had built around her partner. There, among temporary jobs, family routines, and friendships that endure the passage of time, she begins to reassess her relationship with desire: childhood, shame, first contacts, the fear of being touched or that no one will ever touch her again.
After a sexual experience she cannot name, her therapist proposes a pause: no sex, neither alone nor with others. What seemed a withdrawal becomes an intimate search about love, pleasure, freedom and the body. Beneath all of this lies an uncomfortable question: how much of what we desire has truly been chosen?
With humor, bluntness, and a magnetic voice, The Dry Years speaks of desire, loneliness and the stories through which we learn to survive. A sweeping debut. A dazzling read”.
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Author: Raquel Zas. Title: The Dry Years. Publisher: Temas de Hoy. Available from: All Your Books.