Cold, evil, fear. says “bad” elvira lindo “she’s a part of our beautiful world” ever since she made her first date. And from that moment on, everything is shrouded in that delicate and terrifying cloak, in which children discover the nature of adult-induced fears, which they portray in fantasies like restless vermin. Reading the book touches a person, this is a girl who first tries to place her where the adults around her are not quite able to move.. Girl for life. But she’s running. With this escape route, the syntax of the novel was formed.
title of the novel in the lion’s den (Seix Barral). We spoke to him in the dim light at his home. She is looking, Elvira Lindo is always looking, as if the questions we were going to ask her were on her face.. Predicting or wanting them, he is always on the alert with the air of a bird that does not miss a single letter of what he hears.
There is calm in the house, there is a lot of calm, but it should be noted that it is an alarming calm, as if Elvira Lindo was never truly calm. Even if it doesn’t move. This is the interview.
Q. At the beginning there is a sentence that dominates the entire book: “Evil is part of our beautiful world.”
r. This is not my statement. From Mary Oliver. I chose him because he’s a poet with a spiritual side and it fits the story I’m about to tell. There is also a dialogue between souls in this book. Characters are at a point in their lives where they can only tell the truth. That’s why I chose the sentence because it goes with the tone. We live in a time when many words are becoming unimportant, and I make sure the words have the right weight in my stories. So, when you talk about evil, it does not mean that everyone is bad. I mean, it’s part of human nature.
Q. Where do you find evil today?
r. I think there is one evil that perhaps goes unnoticed in society today, and that is indifference. We live in a time where few have much and many have so little. And there’s a lot of indifference in that respect, isn’t it? Herein lies the evil.
Q. How did you think about the girl at the beginning of the book?
r. At first it would be something simpler. I thought about who we are, in this case when we left our childhood behind and the places you visited at that stage in life were fixed on you. But… I slowly got a taste of simple childhood nostalgia, you know? Then I began to think about the helplessness of children who were not well taken care of by their parents. Something based on conversations I’ve had with two people who suffer from this kind of homelessness. A psychologist could have told me that. But look, no. Because when you get a testimony from someone who has experienced that situation, everything becomes much more revealing. I am currently reading about the status of the boy from La Rioja. [asesinado por un pederasta] and… At the hearing there, I put myself in the parents’ shoes, listened to everything their son went through, and I think there was no choice in this situation because that’s the way the justice process is. But covering the event in the media requires more care because it involves injured people. That’s why I decided to approach this subject from the sources of the tale and the story… And I wanted to emphasize that these people have a wound, but they are not destined to misfortune.
Q. Is your childhood part of your childhood that you describe in this book?
r. The environment, atmosphere and humanity of the people I grew up in are all part of this… So I am not indifferent to the setting in which the book takes place, but I am indifferent to the girl’s story. Maybe what I experienced was fear. Look: My childhood was fed with scary fairy tales because the grown-ups didn’t think it could get into your dreams. They told me stories that instilled a lot of fear in a child. They were stories of children who were lost, abducted, or fattened and then eaten. Maybe they told us to warn us, to say that danger could break out at any moment, I don’t know.
Q. These threats to children are renewed, right?
r. Well… there’s been a setback in children’s freedom. I remember when we arrived in Madrid we moved very freely in open spaces or in many places. And I think freedom no longer exists. As adults we protected them too much, maybe rightfully so, I don’t know. I belong to a very large family and now many children grow up in families of two or three and this completely changes childhood because everything is coexistence between several people. Now parents know very well what their children see and the information they receive… The truth is that I was relieved to have children before because today seems very complicated to me. Because children are exposed to stimuli and things like that that can cause them to get stressed.
Since I have a public life, I always meet someone who wants to hurt me. Someone who wants attention by doing or saying something bad to you.
Q. Are there any fears you inherit from the girl you are?
r. Yes, I was afraid of unreal things in childhood, didn’t I? Ghosts and stuff. And I think I continued to look after them for a few years as an adult. Today I still think I’m afraid of people who want to hurt. Since I have a public life, I always meet someone who wants to hurt me. Someone who wants attention by doing or saying something bad to you.
Q. What is literature to you when you approach a sensitive subject?
r. This novel helped me have another life inside of me. And when I told about my family’s life, it helped me organize my past.
Q. Have you alleviated fear with fiction?
r. It was very exciting to write this book. It was like going back to my childhood paradise, to the people I grew up with, to the nature I lived in, smelled, admired, as I was advancing on a familiar land… It’s something I’ve never experienced before, it’s written, you know? I mean the flight of a bird, the falling of leaves, or the life of animals and the life of humans. It was a pure party.
Q. How did the need to tell this story arise?
r. I know the area well, but one day I went to the highest village because they were doing a news on Valencia television and this seemed to me a very extraordinary, very beautiful place and I thought I should come back here. And I’m back. And that second visit was when I started thinking about the characters, and from there it was a constant joy. Because it is a very rich place, there is a lot of variety, there is a lot of water…. All of this got me thinking about those childhood afternoons when we kids moved from one place to another. But then things got complicated and I started thinking about the spirits out there.
I’ve had a very busy, complicated life since I was a kid. The other day, I thought I forgot to mature because I had so many experiences. And I continued to be very innocent for many things.”
Q. Is this what you’ve had from your childhood?
r. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a very busy, perhaps tumultuous, complex life. The other day I thought I forgot to mature just because I had so many experiences. And I continued to be very innocent for many things. But I already realized that it was because of my rush to always have to do everything. Do everything and soon.
Q. Still?
r. No. Now I have a much calmer, more peaceful life where everything has a certain time. Work, family, friends and personal.
Q. It is interesting that the word joy is rarely pronounced here.
r. Anyhow. This. It seems that scary endings are more prestigious in literature than hopeful endings, and I think that’s a bit unfair. Because I don’t find it right to condemn people for the misfortunes of the past.
Listening to the radio and reading the newspaper in the morning…. It makes me feel like I’m living in an uncontrollable world.”
Q. There is a lot of confusion here too. What surprises you now?
r. A lot of things. Now just listen to the radio in the morning and read the newspaper…. It gives me the feeling of living in an uncontrollable world. I read about that American company that is going to start making radio stations with sounds created by AI and… I don’t quite understand that. I think Artificial Intelligence will change us as humans, right?
P. Like a grudge, isn’t it?
r. Resentment is an emotion that should be avoided. Because it is doubly negative: for the person you hold grudges against, and for yourself. Resentment is something that makes you dirty. There are times when there are justified grudges, I’m not saying no. There are many situations in life that are forgivable and unforgivable. But… grudge is bad food, right? You have every right to be angry, but it’s not good for you.
Q. There is silence here, but there is also music. For example from Patti Smith..
r. Well, Patti Smith and various Italian songs that are very important here.
P. Yes. but i don’t know them.
r. They were songs that were danced at town festivals. Interesting is the silence. Someone arrives in the field and it seems to us that there is silence, but no. If attention is paid, there will never be silence on the field.
Q. The hero has something to say, which can also be asked to the author: “How am I and how is my life?”
r. Hahaha. It’s hard to say what kind of person I am. Whenever I see people describing themselves, I notice an excessive ego and I don’t like it. I prefer others to see me. And how is my life? This is something I’ve asked myself several times. Sometimes it was miserable, but now… now I would stay in this present! Because I believe that the greatest peace and happiness in life is in the maturity period.
Anyone who has experienced homelessness as a child carries it throughout their life. It is a wound that opens from time to time and creates fear and anxiety.”
Q. What are the consequences of bullying against children?
r. In the future? Well… being bullied as a child has profound consequences that stigmatize you for life. Now, because we all talk about ourselves so much, people put the word trauma to any situation, any challenge they face in life. That’s also true. But I don’t think I’m trivializing the word trauma here. The girl went through a real trauma. Anyone who has experienced homelessness as a child carries it throughout their life. For example, it is a wound that opens from time to time and creates fear and anxiety.
Q. Anyway, this is a scary book..
r. Yes, but it’s also a very satisfying book because I wanted the reader to feel from the very first page that something was wrong, something was hidden, and then gradually discover what the behavior was. answer. Let two people understand why there is pain in their life and why a wound is always tender. But they also know that life is worth it.
Q. At the end of the book, there is a question I have underlined to ask you: “When do we leave places for good?”
r. Oops, this is such a difficult thing. I’ve definitely left somewhere. But there are two or three that I know haven’t gone, and that’s why it’s hard to go back. I didn’t leave New York forever because it was decisive in my life. I didn’t completely leave my mother’s town. I did not completely leave the neighborhood of my adolescence in Madrid.