When I Sing, Mountains Dance Novel by Irene Solà

Again full points to the
design team on this cover
the image, part textbook, 
part stylised almost to the
point of surrealism, really
fits the novel.

Irene Solà is an annoyingly talented multidisciplinarian from Barcelona, something of a renaissance woman. She is an internationally displayed visual artist, having studied fine art at the University of Barcelona. Her collection of poetry, Bèstia, is highly acclaimed. When I Sing, Mountains Dance is her second novel, and was originally (like, I believe, all of her work) written in Catalan as Canto jo i la muntanya balla.

I must admit when I started When I Sing, for the first couple of chapters I thought, "this is going to be a bit of a slog". The novel is a story of the mountains, which, as far as I can tell are the Pyrenees. No. It's not a story. 'Story' implies a more coherent narrative journey. In many ways When I Sing is more of a prose poem. Each chapter is told from a different point of view, many the inhabitants of the isolated region, some who have been here for a long time, some newcomers. But some chapters are also told from the point of view of less traditional observers. Such as the mountains them selves (complete with geography text book style diagrams) and (this was one of the first two which initially made me inwardly groan) a storm rolling in over the landscape. But actually, once you get into the flow of it, it works. It really works. 

The chapters are more like short stories, each with its own focus. But as we read on the overlaps build up and we start to see a bigger picture. There is some movement forward in time, with individuals having their own stories which grow from multiple view points, but these are delivered in a fragmentary manner, and blend together so we get a better impression of the locale than we do the people, indeed the people are merely elements in the landscape, and the two blend together, especially in the more mythical segments, which come across as borne of both human imagination and the topography.

The star on the Catalan flag is inspired by that
of Cuba.

By the third chapter, I was hooked. By the end of the novel I was of the opinion this was one of the best novels I've read this year. ★★★★★

NB: There is an interesting conversation between Solà and her fellow Catalan writer, and author of the last book I reviewed, Eva Baltasar.