Suiza
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
How transformative can love actually be?
Across the Galician countryside, where there are just as many rain-soaked days as not, villagers face hardships armed with hope and solidarity. Tomás is a successful farmer in this small village, but he’s not happy. His days are busy with work. His nights are a drunken spiral into self-pity and despair. A widower plagued with guilt, his life has been tarnished by tragedy that has pushed him into isolation and loneliness. All of that changes when he sees Suiza.
Warm-hearted and sensual, Suiza lands in the village en route to visit the sea. Her innocently provocative manner disturbs the tranquility of this town. Like all the men who meet her, Tomás is immediately crazy about her. What is initially a simple carnal desire will gradually transform into love and offer the possibility of personal transformation as well.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The verdant countryside of Galicia, Spain, is the setting for Belpois's immersive and disturbing debut about a farmer whose world is transformed after a sensuous outsider arrives. At the outset, Tomás Lopez Gabarre, 40, undergoes surgery for lung cancer. He's been prosperous in the secluded village where residents are used to living frugally, though he's been an unhappy, taciturn widower for 16 years. Then he sees a French-speaking woman named Suiza at the local bar, who one of the villagers had recently found sleeping in a chicken coop, filthy and starving. Suiza doesn't understand Spanish, but Tomás is overcome with savage lust for her, which he describes as violent and almost uncontrollable ("I wanted to rape that woman, like a barbarian"). They embark on a sexual relationship, which may or may not have begun consensually, and after a French woman teaches Suiza some Spanish, Suiza and Tomás fall in love. Belpois does a good job showing how Suiza's fresh outlook transforms Tomás's farm, as well as the impressions of the small-minded villagers who initially believed she was "stupid," though this tender material feels discordant with Tomás's coarse language and a tragic, abruptly violent ending. This rough-edged anti–fairy tale is not for the faint of heart.
