A vital adventure novel in Puerto Rico

In that period of forced confinement at home, he started with a personal diary with a humorous tone that he shared on Facebook, but the challenge of creating a longer and deeper story was already on his mind. “Then I traveled with my mother to Puerto Rico and as soon as we arrived we caught the covid and we were locked up for about twenty days. And there I was spinning the story that I already had in my head”. Yari’s story That girl with big eyes and violet eyes. A girl who is born and grows up in the shadow of the traumas that her mother carries from childhood and who stars in a plot that mixes passion, mysticism and drama with the spell and magic of family constellations.

“There is a black genre, romantic, magical realism, eroticism… It is difficult to classify,” says the author of the story of Yarí, a character who is closer to the world spiritual than the earthly one, whom Carla Garraus makes “stumble several times” in the adventure that confronts her with an unknown past for her and in which she is involved in a series of tragic and violent events. With Puerto Rico and the Caribbean as a backdrop –something is also set in Madridwhere the “darkest part of the protagonist” takes place–, this story of personal growth, in which sensuality and crime are not lacking, appeals to an optimistic and hopeful message:“That despite everything you have behind, despite to backpack that we all bring from our ancestors, in the end we have a fairly large margin to design our lives, to be free and to think that the world is ours and nobody else’s”, defends Carla Garraus.

an essential power

The novel, published by The Galobart Books –editorial for which the Pamplona-born author has previously written other books such as those in the children’s collection She he either Great Villains of History– reflects the power of Energy and of love, the spirituality by which Garraus feels represented and which is closely linked to “the inheritance of love or suffering that other people can leave you. That is genetically transmitted. There are traumas that you inherit, and if you dig deeper and work on it, you can find out its origin”.

And the best thing, he continues, “is that you can Modify that genetics, break that spell and, facing it, change not only your life but the lives of those who come after you.” A power to which we do not pay the attention it deserves. “We continue by inertia and we forget ourselves, but we must take care so much inside to feel free, to feel that life is yours and to know that you have to live with yourself… That way we would all get along much better and we would be more happy”, assures the writer, who studied journalism in Madrid and worked for many years as a copywriter and creative for a large advertising agency.

Connected to the Caribbean

Of That girl with big eyes and violet gaze says that “it is not autobiographical at all”, but she has put a lot of herself into shaping the characters: “That’s the way I like to meet people: I draw a lot from the inside, of how each one of us is inside; how we each breathe and why. I am quite empathetic in that sense, connecting with people in depth makes me happy, ”she points out. Puerto Rico also makes him happy, where he usually spends seasons. “Throw estate it’s very easy there, life hooks you relaxed and the grateful that it is the people with what they have and what surrounds them, their climate, their landscape. They don’t take it for granted, they enjoy it and are grateful for it every day”, says Carla Garraus, who is now finalizing her second novel“a more romantic and more comical story” than the first and that, yes, keeps him where he is so comfortable: in the islands and the Caribbean.