With great command of observation and narrative, Elvira Valgañón writes thirteen stories based on as many paintings.

The new book by the writer from Rioja, Elvira Valgañón is a volume of short stories. Nothing to do with “Invierno” (Winter), a 2017 novel that left an excellent impression at the time. In “Línea de penumbra” (Line of Darkness) (Pepitas de Calabaza publishing house) the author has decided to help boost her imagination with paintings by different painters, eras and schools. Thirteen paintings, thirteen stories around it.

The masters range from Domenico Ghirlandaio, Hans Memling, Bosco and Artemisia Gentileschi to William Hogarth, Francis Bacon and Edward Hopper, including a cave painting. Precisely, Valgañón points out that cave paintings, with their bison, mammoths or red deer traced with oxide and charcoal, are never found at the entrance of the caves, but rather in that “invisible line that separates the light from the shadows, the line of darkness”.

Read more: El Pais