The alcaravea (caraway) is a wild plant with small flowers. Its seeds have different uses that could replicate the stories in this book.

Medicinal: as an infusion this spice calms children’s colic (many are the children who cry here, despite the lullabies), but, in addition, it serves to clean and heal wounds, whether those of mothers defeated by life, those of a vizier in love or those of a shy stepbrother.

Culinary: a bittersweet taste spices most of the stories. In them, there is desolation and even horror at times, but also the light of a tenderness that heals.

Relaxing: its aroma, used in oils and lotions, has a calming quality that the characters in these stories will be grateful for.

In Alcaravea Irene Reyes-Noguerol takes the deepest care in the musicality and the precision of every phrase, handling with empathy the darkness in the broken characters, showing the way to redemption.

 

“Irene Reyes-Noguerol has been able to grant these creatures an intimate, heroic, divine epic. I don’t know what literary life is, but I do know what living literature consists of. Irene also knows it, because she is already one more member of the club together with Homero, Cernuda, Borges.” Fernando Iwasaki

 

SELECTED BY GRANTA AS ONE OF THE BEST SPANISH LANGUAGE WRITERS UNDER 35 – April 2021

 

Best Spanish Books of 2024: El País & El Mundo

“A new way of seeing the world…Might she be the best in the world?” – Laura Gómez Ruiz, La Vanguardia

“Of an unbearable beauty…These twelve short-stories are pure ASMR. The plurality of narrative voices share a common tone, a quietude, a pearl of wisdom, a calmness that is profound and bright. […] I cannot think of a greater profusion of intimacy and secrecy, and Irene Reyes-Noguerol shows that there is no need to always focus on the ‘I’ to get to the heart of tenderness.” – Luna Miguel, Babelia

“In Alcaravea, Irene Reyes-Noguerol invites us on a literary journey that intertwines the intimate and the universal through stories that explore human emotions in all their depth. Inspired by her family’s experiences and by oral tradition, in her work Irene manages to capture a unique combination of tenderness, pain and resilience.” – Henar Soto, La Razón

“Irene Reyes-Noguerol is a master of language, a narrator capable of expanding the sound of words to break the scenarios of the story. […] A talent on a level with the great masters of the genre. A talent with deep past ties and an imprescriptible future.” – José Luis Díaz Caballero, Zenda

“With her peculiar style, Irene Reyes-Noguerol interweaves a dozen stories that explore all the nooks and crannies of human emotions through a deeply poetic language in which orality and narrative freshness stand out.” – Andrés Seoane, El Mundo

“La escritora del futuro.” Ascención Rivas, El Cultural

“Her sensuous and reflective writing, of unquestionable poetic impact, is always attentive to detail, seeping into it with an admirable narrative pulse.” – Jaime Cedillo, El Cultural

“The themes […] sound and resound with measured drama: guilt, loneliness, helplessness, the creative drive, the search for God and meaning, madness… […] going from the concrete experiences of the characters toward their universality.” – Anna Maria Iglesias, El Periódico

“These stories calm, soothe, cradle, lead to relief and reparation. […] The oral quality of this book is overwhelming, direct, simple and effective. […] It’s a display of orality, rhyme and beauty.” – Karina Sainz Borgo, ABC

“Pain grows at times, but the style of Reyes-Noguerol illuminates the dark areas. […] Such a torn expression, so rooted in the Andalusian land, echoes some of Lorca’s mythical characters.” – María Paredes, The Objective

“A very polished style joined by a metaphorical backdrop that gives uniformity to the whole collection. […] These stories feature individuals with a soul, inside which a complex world of contained passions beats.” – Ascensión Rivas, El Cultural

“One of those new female writers that, with courage and determination, are offering us their steady gaze over a society that is full of edges, often too sharp for us to emerge unscathed. […] [It is] at the intersection between the possibilities and power of language, and the scars of human beings where Irene Reyes-Noguerol steps forth.” – Ramón Rozas, Diario de Pontevedra

“Family stories expand and become universal, while those of artists are humanized. […] Irene Reyes-Noguerol creates twelve stories characterized by a majestic style, shocking at first, and tremendously beautiful in every detail.” – La Sexta

“A tribute to oral tradition, vindicating the emotions that intimacy reserves.” – Braulio Ortiz, Diario de Sevilla

“We are in front of a great book, one of those books you can read again after some time and always be sure to find in their pages an emotion or an image that make the trip worthwhile.” – Antonio Parra Sanz, La Verdad

 

160 pages – Original language: Spanish/World (Páginas de Espuma, 2024)