Dawn is breaking over the Guilleries, a rugged mountain range in Catalonia frequented by wolf hunters, brigands, deserters, race-car drivers, ghosts, and demons. In a remote farmhouse called Mas Clavell, an impossibly old woman lies on her deathbed. Family and caretakers drift in and out. Meanwhile, all the women who have lived and died in that house are waiting for her to join them. They are preparing to throw her a party.
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.
