Mammoth
Eva Baltasar
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Recommended by Victoria
‘Mammoth is the third novel(la) in Eva Baltasar’s loosely connected triptych – Permafrost and Boulder are the other two. Reading those first is not a prerequisite for enjoying Mammoth: the books primarily share Baltasar’s style – distinguished by acerbic wit, dotted with punches of insight – and the fact of a lesbian character – albeit a different one in each book. In Mammoth, the unnamed first-person narrator is young and desperate to get pregnant but also tired of cosmopolitan life in Barcelona. She seeks a simpler life on an abandoned farm in the Catalan hills, but of course life has a knack of never being really simple.’
From the publisher
Translated by Julia Sanches
Like a lesbian Walden where everything goes terribly wrong, Mammoth is the latest from the International Booker-shortlisted author of Boulder
A GUARDIAN BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR 2024
AN OBSERVER BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR 2024
A NEW STATESMAN BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR 2024
Mammoth’s protagonist is a disenchanted young lesbian. She’s inexperienced, irritated by life, eager to gestate, and determined to strip everything else down to essentials. She seduces men at random, swaps her urban habitat for an isolated farmhouse, befriends a shepherd, nurses lambs, battles stray cats, waits tables, cleans house, and dabbles in sex work - all in pursuit of life in the raw.
This small bomb of a novel, not remotely pastoral, builds to a howling crescendo of social despair, leaving us at the mercy of Eva Baltasar’s wild voice.