Boulder - tildebooks

112 pages

English language

Published Feb. 18, 2022 by And Other Stories.

ISBN:: 978-1-913505-38-7

(1 review)

Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname 'Boulder'. When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already forty and can't bear to let the opportunity pass her by. Boulder is less enthused, but doesn't know how to say no – and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien.

With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love.

Once again, Eva Baltasar demonstrates her pre-eminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world – and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.

1 edition

ralentina reviewed Boulder by Julia Sanches

On not moving to Iceland for love

5 stars

Content warning minor spoilers

A Spanish butch leads a life of freedom as a cook for a cargo ship by the coast of Chile, until she falls in love with a corporate geologist. The geologist doesn't like their name, so she nicknames her boulder - a gesture that encapsulate what is to come. Their romance is passionate and fulfilling, until Boulder agrees to move to Iceland together. Soon she finds herself trapped in a life she doesn't want, and starts resenting her partner ('She thinks of me as a challenge and believes she can train me the way a farmer would train a wolf—it drives me up the fucking wall'). Things get progressively worse. On my personal reading notes, I recorded that reading this book felt like swearing after dropping a weight on your toes, i.e. it felt good.