Wickedly sumptuous ... Written with ribald vibrancy ... In the shocking, seductive novel I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness, the devil is no match for the wits and wiles of ferocious women.
A rich, tantalising brew ... A heady, exhilarating, compact tale that seems as old as the Catalan mountains and as fresh as a newly plucked chicken ... Solà beautifully aligns past and present ... Solà’s imagery is unexpected and uninhibited, matched by Mara Faye Lethem’s unerring translation. This is a novel of survival, resistance, malice and cunning, set in a forest-thick land ...
For a story about witches that reaches back in time to the dark ages, I Gave You Eyes is also very funny. Misogynist folk sayings sprinkled throughout the story read like a catalog of punch lines to one big, albeit dangerous, joke on male anxiety... Whether you believe in counternarratives or just telling the same stories from different perspectives, the narrative shifting in I Gave You Eyes is so fluid that you could be forgiven for losing your place in the story’s timeline ... The research doesn’t feel like a history lesson though. Instead, Solà bridges these old legends to the present with her unforgettable family of characters, of whom at least one is based on a real historical figure from her home town of Malla.
There are wonderful lists: of the different kinds of shit on the mountain, of cheese-making equipment, of body parts fondled by hands in the dark. I read the book twice in quick succession and every time I opened it, I found something to savour. The prose has the demonic excess of a Hieronymus Bosch painting ... Solà’s serious attention to the nonhuman makes most contemporary realist literary fiction feel narrow and timid, wilfully deaf to the other forms of life with which all human drama is interdependent ... I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness compares all its humans to animals: Blanca has a 'bovine' face, Joana’s is like a mare. Sometimes, the connection is illuminating. But more often, the emphasis on urges and ugliness reduces and simplifies both human and animal, rather than opening them out to one another’s complexity.
Powerful ... Among the many backstories revealed, those of Margarida and Bernadeta are the most verdant and provide a stark contrast in that both, to dramatically different degrees, have dealings with the devil despite the ill favor that Joana’s interaction brought upon the family ... Lethem thrives within Solà’s whimsy, producing some deliciously lyrical and trippy imagery ... Solà fleshes out her parable of temptation and sin with historical details of betrayal and abuse.
The story partitioned into times of the day, from dawn to night, Solà enlivens a sprawling family (and their adjacents), moving without linearity or boundaries as they suffer, rejoice, manipulate, survive, and even long for the final peace of death.
A fabulous achievement, at once sweeping and sly, raunchy and richly compelling ... Men feature throughout, both brutal and tenderhearted. But it’s the women—varied, critical, clamorous—who carry on the family narrative.
Entrancing ... Solà blends lyrical retellings of legends with visceral descriptions of the characters’ maladies. Readers will be transported by this intoxicating tale of resilience.
