This review actually appeared online a couple months ago, but National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward’s piece on Merce Rodoreda’s Death in Spring made it onto “All Things Considered” last night.
I personally think Death in Spring is one of the most unique, and interesting books that we’ve published, and it’s fantastic that this is getting such great publicity. This is available at better bookstores everywhere, and through our website.
Additionally, this is part of our First 25, a collection of the first 25 titles we published, available for $200 $175. (Just enter “FIRST25” at checkout to receive the $25 discount.)
And to whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt from Death in Spring:
I removed my clothes and dropped them at the foot of the hackberry tree, beside the madman’s rock. Before entering the river, I stopped to observe the color left behind by the sky. The sun-dappled light was different now that spring had arrived, reborn after living beneath the earth and within branches. I lowered myself gently into the water, hardly daring to breathe, always with the fear that, as I entered the water world, the air—finally emptied of my nuisance—would begin to rage and be transformed into wind that blew furiously, like the winter wind that nearly carried away houses, trees, and people. I had sought the broadest part of the river, the farthest from the village, a place where no one ever came. I didn’t want to be seen. The water flowed, sure of itself, confident with the weight that descended from mountains, snow and fountains escaping the shadows through holes in rocks. All the waters joined together for the delirium of joining and flowed endlessly, the land on both sides. As soon as I had passed the stables and the horse enclosure, I realized I was being followed by a bee, as well as by the stench of manure and the honey scent of wisteria that was beginning to blossom. The water was cold as I cut through it with my arms and kicked it with my feet; I stopped from time to time to drink some. The sun, filled with the desire to fly, was rising on the other side of Pedres Altes, streaking the white winter water. To trick the bee that was following me, I ducked under the water so it would lose me and not know what to do. I knew about
the obstinate, seven-year-old bees that possessed a sense of understanding. It was turbid under the water, like a glass cloud that reminded me of the glass balls in the courtyards beneath the strong wisteria vines, the wisteria that over the years upwrenched houses.
The houses in the village were all rose-colored. We painted them every spring and maybe for that reason the light was different. It captured the pink from the houses, the same way it took on the color of leaves and sun by the river. Shut inside in winter, we made paintbrushes from horsetails with handles of wood and wire, and when we had finished them, we put them away in the shed in the Plaça and waited for good weather. Then all of us, men and boys, would go to the cave on Maraldina in search of the red powder we needed for the pink paint . . . When we returned to the village, we would mix the red powder with water to make pink paint that winter would erase. In spring—bees buzzing about, blooming wisteria hanging from houses—we painted. And suddenly the light was different. [. . .]
I decided to stroll through the soft grass, up the incline; at the end of the slope the tree nursery appeared from behind some shrubs. The seedlings had tender trunks and no leaves; but all of them would carry death
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