The liner notes of Aretha Franklin's Only the Lonely take over the Bar. Francesca Coll closes her eyes. She sips a drink of Estrella. The midday light filters through the glass panes, and she smiles. "I've always liked solitude, isolation, being with myself," reflects the writer and painter. And a way to immerse herself in that desired solitude, articulated through a broad and magical private world, is to write. "That's something I already did as a child: writing to stop being myself." She continues to do it now, so many years later, never losing the playful perspective of the matter.
"I became a mother very young, my children are now 31 and 27 years old, so for many years my priorities were different," she explains. Until she was 40, she didn't own her time again, with the children already grown and a divorce that changed her coordinates –"I went from a house near a forest, in my native Sant Quirze, to living in an apartment in Sabadell"– and, above all, made her ask herself who she wanted to be and, consequently, what she wanted to do.
That was the trigger. Writing and painting. Reconnecting with the sweet embrace of a solitude that allowed her to peek into the worlds she had within. "I enrolled in a writing school to refine my technique," she recalls. And she honed her skills by writing stories that explored the intimacy of that personal universe.
--- Don't you think about the possibility of publishing those stories?
The writer sketches a smile as she shakes her head. "I am very critical of what I write. And, although I like those narratives, if I considered releasing them, I would have to polish and work on them much, much more."Everything has to be exact, every word, every concept, every notion.The obsessive drive of every writer which, in his case, is accentuated by the Asperger's he has been diagnosed with.Making sense of 20 years of inconsistencies
What Francesca Coll has seen her literary expectations satisfied with ishis debut novel,the recently publishedTwenty years of silence(AlRevés), a fiction based on the media case of the murder of librarian Helena Jubany, which took place in 2001, presented as an enigma novel indebted to the legacy of her beloved Agatha Christie. It is impossible, in fact, not to think of Hercule Poirot when the reader encounters the Belgian detective Pirot, the protagonist of this work, during the writing of which Francesca even contacted Helena's brother, Joan."With this story, I believe I have found the literary ground I want to delve into, that of fictionalizing real crimes," explains the author, who confesses that the work of "having tried to make sense of the inconsistencies and puzzles posed by this case from fiction, from being alone with some facts and my imagination" has something therapeutic about it. "I have felt very comfortable doing it."
But there is something more. Like any good crime novel, the book reveals more than it explains. Everything that lies behind a criminal act and that expresses what we are, as a society, as a collective. The ferocity that is not limited only to the crime itself, but to much of that human landscape that surrounds and contextualizes it. That makes it possible.
--- So, will there be more?
The writer nods. "Yes, I am studying other more or less media-covered cases, with the idea of novelizing them," she announces.
City of shadows
"I can't stand Barcelona's traffic," she protests. The local is passing through the city, coming from Sabadell by car, safe from the crowds and delays of trains and buses, but at the mercy of traffic jams.
However, once here, she feels at ease. "It's a beautifully multicultural city, full of contrasts and nuances, full of shadows, in whose streets any story can take place, any type of character can walk," she observes, with a literary perspective, before finishing her beer and taking out her pack of Winston to go out to the terrace to smoke.
--- What is also still possible in Barcelona is to eat well and at an acceptable price. At least, in this Bar. Lunchtime is approaching and perhaps you can be tempted with something…
It's a splendid sunny day. Don't let me lose this dream by Aretha plays in the background. Francesca Coll brightens up.
"What do you have on the menu?" she asks. And after a few seconds, she warns: "And it must have a good dessert, because I have a sweet tooth." All this, she says, without losing her smile.
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