Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches – Published 2024

At the age of 24 a young woman comes to a turning point in her life. She works in a university position in Barcelona interviewing the elderly for a sociology study on longevity, and perhaps not surprisingly, is bored with it. It isn’t only her job which needs to change, as she is also overwhelmed by ‘the desire to gestate’. She gathers some people that she may loosely call friends for a birthday party, has sex, her first time with a man, but this doesn’t result in a pregnancy. At a loss as what to do next, and in search of identity, she sets off on a journey and ends up in a remote Catalonian community in the Pyrenees, and rents an isolated farmhouse where she intends to live a solitary existence. However, that burning desire for a child is still present.
This is the third of Baltasar’s short novels to be translated into English. Together they form a Triptych of women narrators and their states of beauty, mundanity and absurdity. So far I have only read Boulder, but I think this is superior, possibly because of the woman seeking the answers to her problems through isolation in the wilds of the mountains; something I can identifty with.

The female protagonist cannot settle into the rural customs of the locals, not for the want of trying. She develops a love / hate relationship with a cantankerous neighbouring farmer in his 60s which forms the foundation of the second part of the novel.

Baltasar is at her best when describing the bleak atmosphere around the woman’s property, the muck and mud, her preparations for winter, and the unappealing smells and grime of the way of life she takes on.

There is an intriguing vagueness in the last pages which can either provide some explanation for a grisly incident with an animal earlier, or be seen as an extension of the narrative’s absudity. I prefer the former.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5