The vorrh, in Catling’s The Vorrh trilogy, is a very ancient forest, so old that it’s thought of as being home to the garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve roam along with cyclops and anthropophagi (cannibal rogues that attract humans deep into the forest with pails of water and food). This forest is in itself an entity that has sentience and perhaps even a will, and it rejects the presence of humans by driving them insane. No nos engañemos. Pese a su buena fama y el Premi Llibres Anagrama 2019 o European Union Prize for Literature, Canto yo y la montaña baila no es un libro para todo el mundo. Requiere esfuerzo por parte del lector, gusto por la prosa lírica y conectar al completo con la novela. Las voces narradoras trascienden la página, una y otra vez, pese a no siempre llegan a conquistar del todo al lector. Sin embargo, algunos episodios fascinan por completo (acordaros cuando leáis el del corzo o el oso). Pero si de algo estoy seguro, es que todos te llevan a sentir, vivir y respirar la montaña.

A little of this goes a long way, and then I wished the narrative would just get to the point. This is partly an issue of personal taste, but also a problem because the whole novel, which is meant to be polyphonic, is written in the same style and so different speakers don’t always have differentiated voices.There's no plot, the reader just follows along as some element from the last chapter becomes the focal point of the following chapter and through this string of connected slice-of-life moments, one learns about the entire region from people in town and the water nymphs in the mountains and the ghosts who wander. There's a whole gamut of emotions in each chapter and a wide range of personalities but it all comes together to create a kind of whimsical but somehow meaningful experience. The poetic style, unfortunately, which seems widely loved and praised, really wasn't for me. Chapter after chapter is told in short, naïve sentences, often repeating, often building upon themselves into a kind of fragmented run-on poem. It drove me a bit mad: This book made me swoon. Translated with great musicality, tenderness, and wit, When I Sing, Mountains Dance is thirst-quenching literature of the best kind, rich and ranging, shimmering with human and non-human life, the living and the dead, in our time and deep time. Here is a Pyrenees fable that is utterly universal, deadly funny, and profoundly moving.” —Max Porter It's a bit early to say this, but I'm gonna call this my favorite book for the year. It absolutely enchanted me. Inventive and lyrical. . . . When I Sing, Mountains Dance is work of unexpected emotional power.” —Trisha Collopy, Ploughshares

Es evocador, triste, bello, muy sensitivo, con un sentimiento tan puro y vívido que ha logrado teletransportarme a esa zona de los Pirineos de los que habla: la casita de Matavaques, Mia, Jaume, Lluna, e Hilari (¡Ay! Hilari🖤) la dureza de la vida en la montaña, el paso del tiempo, las tradiciones, leyendas... The text cited by Tim Ingold appears in the essay ‘From trust to domination: an alternative history of human-animal relations’, in Ingold’s book The Perception of the Environment, London: Routledge, 2000.) Laxness’ novel focuses on Bjartur of Summerhouses, a poor Icelandic farmer of the early 20th century who maintains an isolated croft at the edge of a loosely habitable world and one which is not. The wilderness here, becomes Bjartur’s nemesis and the book focuses on what this violent struggle for survival and sanity in an inhospitable and cruel landscape can inflict on the human soul.

ha….for my benefit too …..I’d like to re- read these again in six months and see what I think then. The mountains we’d been, the houses and the dens and the liars and the terraces and the crests we had been, shall cease to be. And our peaks will become valleys and plains, and our ruins, our remains, will become tons of rubble sinking into the sea, new mountains”. Probablemente, eso es solo quedarse en la superficie. Es muy difícil hablar de esta novela, de verdad. Más aún, tratar de decir de que va. En realidad, no es más que un despliegue de elementos que construyen un escenario rural y montañoso a través de una escritura tan poética como detallista. Sin embargo, es la originalidad de los dieciocho narradores, pasando desde un rayo hasta un corzo o un oso, donde aparece la magia y crea cierta fascinación (o rechazo) por la novela. Canto yo y la montaña baila se va deshojando como una flor en monólogos internos mientras parece no contar nada, pero a la vez cuenta muchas cosas. Historias pequeñas, anécdotas, sensaciones y momentos de los habitantes (humanos o no) de un pequeño pueblo de Los Pirineos.

And then report water out in colossal drops like coins onto the earth and the grass and the stones, and the mighty La narración tiene las características de un canto poético, que recuerda por momentos el naturalismo del siglo XVIII-XIV, dándole voz a los vivos y muertos, a los animales, las plantas e incluso a la montaña misma:The novel’s poetics are of a primordial sort, encompassing both geographical upheavals and the detritus left behind by outside conflicts. A girl struggles with her uncommon coming of age, pulling dead grenades from the river and pretending that the couple she spies on is magical; disaster befalls friends out on a hunt. Visitors arrive, romanticizing the locals; the locals resist their clumsy inveigling, knowing that visitors fade. This is the route of the retreat into exile. Where the Republicans fled. Civilians and soldiers. Toward France. It’s a damp morning. I inhale, bringing all that clean, wet, pure mountain air deep into my lungs. That aroma of earth and tree and morning. It’s no surprise the people up here are better, more authentic, more human, breathing this air every day. And drinking the water from this river. And looking out every day at the majesty of these legendary mountains, so beautiful it pains the soul. During her long recovery from ‘the bear’s kiss’, as she fondly calls it, she interrogates the events that will lead her towards an understanding of what has happened to her; and to this end unspools an attentive and passionate account of the people and animals amongst whom she has lived. Ultimately, too, she shares her confusion, her inability to decipher the timeless puzzle with which she is confronted. She finds herself at the very limits of interpretation. They leave me standing in front of the bakery. There’s no note on the door. No obituary. Nothing. It’s a quarter after eleven. The butcher’s shop and the bakery are the only two stores in town. You can buy most anything at the butcher’s, milk and juice and even pasta and rice and wine. In the bakery there’s even more, it even has dish soap and scrubbers and mops.