Things have changed so much, no wonder we are all saying this is a very different summer from all the others we have lived through. Even though we can go to the beach, and to restaurants (preferably with terraces), and sit outside watching the sunset while sipping a mojito orcaipirinha, something that we’ve been doing for years, there’s always that feeling that something is not quite right, especially when you have to put on your mask to get …
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Beli invites me to a weekend at her old country house, where we used to celebrate her birthday almost forty years ago during long weekends of never-ending fun. As we approach the entrance I’m no longer in her boyfriend’s Mercedes but in a white Mini, one of three or four cars heading towards adventure; back then it was an old farm road, winding and narrow, all ups and downs, and we had to drive carefully so as not to …
It is a verdant place, surrounded by trees that hide it from those who drive along the road. I parked my car and there he was, his blue eyes bright in a tanned face, not from by the beach but from hours working in the open air, during this almost two-month internship that he loved. Working the land is what my son wants to do for a living, and he has been preparing for that in the last few …
When you finish writing a book you think the work is mostly done, but in the last few years I’ve learned this is far from true – most of the work is still there for you to do it, as your editor tells you to rewrite and rewrite again. And finally, when he is satisfied and he works on the pages you have sent him, and you see the final result, you wonder at how your story can be …
There are times in your life when it seems nothing much happens; you just go on with your life, your well-established routine, day after day, month after month, year after year. Deep down you know you’d like a few things to change, but you are too lazy or too scared to take the initiative. Then one major change comes, and things begin to unravel, and suddenly you find yourself in the midst of great disruption, that will change …
A divine being once said it would be a curse for humans to be able to predict their future, and in fact we cannot. But some people make such accurate predictions that I wonder if that curse has not befallen them. It is the case of Chris Antone, the author of Vicilization: The Fall, a book first published (in French) in 2011 that amazingly predicted the gilet jaune (yellow vest) riots, that took place several years later with an …
All of a sudden, our daily vocabulary has been invaded by new words or expressions; everywhere you look, whatever you hear, they are there. Such as social distance, respiratory etiquette and others I won’t impose on you as, like me, you must be wishing they would disappear, sooner than later, never to return. One of them is the much talked about “new order”. New order may mean many things, from a very original conspiracy theory I heard …
I was doing some research for the final touch ups to my book. I needed the name of a book my heroine, Teresa, had bought in July 1980, precisely forty summers ago. I searched the internet for a familiar title, but nothing. Then I remembered my bookcase, where I keep many books from my youth. By an amazing coincidence, the first one I grabbed was The Swarm, by Arthur Herzog, a sci fi /terror book about the invasion of …
Yesterday I was zapping when I spotted a very familiar movie – the famous (at least to my generation) Saturday Night Fever, that made John Travolta famous, turning him into the idol of all teenage girls. Myself included. I decided to watch it from the beginning, and I loved every minute, recalling the long-ago day of December 78 when I went to movies to see it. I could never forget that date – not only because it was …
Now that it has been almost a month since we began the “comeback”, a few conclusions may be reached. Different reactions The first one is that people have been reacting to this slow return to “normality” (whatever this means now), in very different ways. There are those who, fed up with confinement, believe it’s time to put all of this behind our backs and start leading a normal life. They make the most of the new liberties that …
