"Frankfurt is so beautiful, so majestic. Especially in spring, but also in winter. Four years ago I went to live there and now that I'm back I miss it a lot. I'm almost another person." The notes of Yusef Lateef's Oscarlypso fill the evening atmosphere of the Bar, while the writer Jo Alexander sips a Coca-Cola, which is almost the only thing that goes down well. "Either that or a chamomile tea, everything else makes me feel terrible," she specifies.
Her return to the city is marked by a new book, Una mujer cualquiera vuelve a casa (AlRevés), a collection of stories starring ladies who kill. Murderesses who are so out of necessity, out of a fit of passion, out of spite, by chance or for a matter of subsistence, and who come to life in disparate contexts such as football, a luxurious villa on the shores of the Aegean or turn-of-the-century Canada. "The best part is that I'm not even a big reader of crime novels," confesses the author, although perhaps that lack of specific background exempts and frees her from the vices into which other authors of the genre, who also read and study it, fall to a greater or lesser extent.
Passionate about literature and art since childhood, she remembers with great affection Asunción Castel, that Spanish language teacher who encouraged her to write and who today, at her venerable ninety years, is a friend and reader. "I consider her essentially my mentor, an example of a woman and a person of great integrity," she explains with an unquenchable affection for that woman who, before anyone else, realized that that girl had a natural inclination for writing. She debuted in 1998, at just nineteen years old, with Extrañas criaturas, "which opened many doors for me," she explains. After her debut, she began to collaborate with the audiovisual production company El Terrat and to work in different media such as City TV, La Vanguardia, Primera Línea or Catalunya Ràdio.
However, that debut also precipitated the end of the band she led, Glamour: a quintet very active in that Barcelona of nights spent on the dance floor at Nitsa and which bequeathed to posterity a mini album of five songs. "If I tell you the truth, it's a period of my life that I don't miss at all." She closes her eyes, and transports herself to one of those moments, in that not at all longed-for context, when she made the best decision in the world: "in the private area of a nightclub I said 'no' to a heroin joint." She sighs. "I think that, if I had said 'yes', I wouldn't be alive right now." And she can't help but smile.
Staying with Vallcorba
After her debut, Jo Alexander wrote three short story books as a member of the Germanes Quintana collective: Zel, Por and Llibre de família, works after which she took it easy literarily and did not release her next novel, L'Hivernacle, until 2009. "I had an offer from a small publisher and another from Quaderns Crema. And mind you, I wasn't aware at that moment who Jaume Vallcorba was, of the importance and status he had in the publishing and cultural world, of his transcendence, so imagine the face he made when, after telling me he wanted to publish my novel, I replied that I would think about it because I had another proposal." The writer laughs. "But of course, I ended up publishing with Quaderns Crema and became part of that elite who has published with him."
The next novel arrived almost ten years later, in 2018, with Palas y Héctor, a disturbing story of incestuous love, of obsession and passionate blindness, which she also published with a label of the then already deceased Vallcorba, Acantilado.
--- And now, seven years later, you have released your fourth book. Maybe it's a bit premature, but when is the next one coming?
The writer smiles sideways. "Everyone expects me to write a novel right now. Everyone has spent their lives waiting to see what I do next. But, you know what? All I want to do is go skiing and watch tennis tournaments! I would be happy doing just that!"
Alexander says this about her great passion for sports, "especially for tennis, of which I am fascinated by the psychology of its players, their strength to face moments of crisis and come back without bending."
Surviving a racist city
The writer denies that Barcelona was better before. "In the 80s or 90s maybe it was better if you were white, but this was a city marked by deep racism that I am proud to have survived. I have managed to become my own heroine, my own protector." And again, Frankfurt comes to her mind, the European city she considers "much more authentically cosmopolitan than Barcelona which, moreover, has been sold with the connivance of Barcelonans and which, right now, I wouldn't know whether I love or not."
Yes, there is love in the memory of Banys Nous street, in the heart of the Gothic Quarter, "where my father had an antique shop and warehouse," explains the parishioner, who finishes her drink before concluding: "and walking through it, either on foot or with memory, is something I like."
--- What you will enjoy exploring with your palate and later with your memory is the gastronomic offer of this Bar. If you want to have dinner, we have everything: à la carte, set menu, tapas, combo plates. All delicious!
Jo Alexander doesn't think that's a bad idea at all. She takes a look. The melody of Love theme from Spartacus by Yusef Lateef imbues the atmosphere with a strange harmony in the first moments of dusk. "I'll opt for a tapa," she finally decides.
--- Only one? You'll still be hungry!
The writer shakes her head. "No way, I never finish my plates ---she replies---. People think that's why I'm so thin, but actually it's the other way around: since I'm thin, I can't fit so much food in my stomach!"