AUTHOR: Carme Ripoll
PUBLISHER: Obrador
GENRE: Fiction
READER’S NAME: Alejandro Varderi
DATE: August 11th, 2023
This absorbing bundle weaves a tapestry of questions around a mother and son relationship, as seen in the son’s lover letters addressed to the absent mother after the death of her offspring. Jamie Bradon finds a suitcase containing several bundles of letters from Mrs. Stoneheart to her son, and decides to write a letter to her sharing the sad news since Paul never spoke about his mother.
The twelve letters written between Jamie and Mrs. Stone shed light on the complex and difficult relationship between mother and son, uncovering the shocking truth about Paul’s decision to sever all ties with her. Jealousy, racism, homophobia cruelty and murder in a small American town, most likely in the South, become known and shatter Jamie’s life. One by one the letters give a new clue in the quest to find the reasons for Mrs. Stone and Paul’s falling apart, while telling the story of Jamie and Paul’s life together in New York City.
Jamie’s journey to Barcelona during the 1992 Summer Olympic Games and his stay with Paul in a small seaside town in Mallorca and the Costa Brava years later, their love for jazz and cooking, the cheerful gatherings with friends and Jamie’s family, and their decision to have a child with a surrogated mother, are interspersed with Paul’s documentation on the Ku Klux Klan, their daughter’s Emma reticence to send a photo of herself to her grandmother, and the facts of Paul’s long illness: “Ho sento molt, però no pogut convèncer l’Emma per enviar-li una fotografia, m’ha dit: ‘Explica-li el que vulguis de mi, però no vull que tingui cap foto meva per anar ensenyant-la a les seves amigues com si fóssim íntimes.’” [ I'm so sorry, but I couldn't persuade Emma to send you a picture. She told me: ‘Tell her wherever you want about me, but I don't want her to have my picture to show it to her friends as if we were that close.”
In all, Un feix de cartes captures the reader’s attention reflecting the inadequacies and dark sides of American society, at the core of today’s surge of extremisms and intolerances, fueled by right wing conspiracies and fake news. Thus, the book will appeal to a larger public in the US and abroad, interested in these topics and familiar with the extensive bibliography on them, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963) to George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue (2020.)
Carme Ripoll has published novels, essays, and children’s books. Her short story “Hem de parlar” won First Prize in the Erotic Short Story Contest D.O. Penedès in 2017. She lives in Barcelona.
