Loose verse from Use Lahoz

About the book

An intense, piercing and tremendously human novel that enlightens us about the pain of childhood, the loss of friendship and the erosion of love.

The uncertainty of a loose verse from adolescence to the end of youth.

«Loose Verse is based on the vulnerability of a female character who, in adolescence, must face internal conflicts, such as her attraction to other girls, and family conflicts, such as the separation from her parents and economic difficulties. For three years I have shaped it for the pleasure of creating as the protagonist someone who believes she is not destined to be, someone convinced that being that loose verse, that free spirit to which the title alludes, can make her path easier. I have wanted, therefore, to support her in her vicissitudes and accompany her in her fragility, in her excesses (and her corresponding regrets), in her uncertainty and in her impatience, from adolescence to maturity, taking (just as she does) art as containment barrier.” Use Lahoz

A poem by Eugenio de Andrade says that a friend can sometimes be the desert and other times the water.

Readers of Use Lahoz know that friendship is a recurring theme in his novels and worth revisiting. Just as Octavio Paz said that friendship is a river and a ring, Use Lahoz has united on this occasion both antagonistic concepts to build a poignant story about the narcotic power of desire and the difficulties of facing losses, whether of friendship , love or even time.

Loose verse is based on the vulnerability of a female character who, as a teenager, must face internal and family conflicts.

Before turning fifteen, Sandra Martos discovers her sexual inclination and witnesses her parents’ separation; two circumstances that will make her feel at a disadvantage and at odds with the world around her until, in some camps, she meets Isa, a monitor who will show her the way of life she wanted and did not dare to accept. From that moment, Sandra, in need of references to support her uncertainty, will go to war with her origins and look for answers and shelter outside the family: in friendship, but also in cinema (she will study Audiovisual Communication) and in books. , only places where desolation and heartbreak can be beautiful. Her life takes a turn when she meets Jimena (Ximena, La Equis), a student from a bourgeois family who sets her world on fire, showing her the graceful and carefree face of living, very far from the environment in which Sandra has grown up, and with whom discover the magnetic power of desire and love, as well as the fear of losing them.

To understand Sandra, to support her in her excesses and accompany her in her fragility, Use Lahoz has written this risky novel full of creative freedom, stopping at four significant and determining moments in the life of this young woman from the neighborhood who wants to open herself to the world from his low profile. Four eras of a character who finds in desire a strength to move forward and who assumes uncertainty as an act of resistance, as if he were aware that the happiest person is the one who can assume the greatest amount of uncertainty. Four stages that make up the fresco of a decisive life period, full of births and rebirths, travels, set designs (Oporto, London, Glasgow) and returns (always to Barcelona and Valdecádiar, a classic imaginary region of other novels by Lahoz such as Jauja or La lost station), of models, of archetypes (literary, poetic and cinematographic) that cease to be archetypes.

Unaware of the transience of life, Sandra Martos will embark on living convinced that her references (real or literary) will not fail her and that her nonconformity will not subside, of the magnetic power of friendship and of some loves and of the durability of the feelings without knowing “that a friend can sometimes be the desert and other times the water.” And Sandra finds in desire the necessary strength to live and, when this strength falters, her world falls apart and she seeks refuge in the wrong person. Sandra must face the abandonment of a friend and a partner, something terrible for someone who lacks an ego, for someone who finds it more painful to love than to not be loved.

As in his previous novels, Use Lahoz once again relies on themes such as abandonment, the ups and downs of friendship, the difficulty of sustaining feelings, the class struggle, the capacity of money to determine the future and that of childhood to determine our lives, and in a clean, precise, cultured and at the same time oral literary style, without giving up his recognized fabulatory capacity and a prose rich in images and nuances.

Through Loose Verse there are characters who try to escape both money and the absence of money, contradictory characters who embrace doubt, who never fall into Manichaeism, who struggle between the ring and the suitcase, between the road and the cabin, that eternal and imperishable vital dilemma. Characters who are defined by how they speak or how they act.

Sandra is the protagonist despite herself, as she is someone who firmly believes that she is not destined to be the protagonist. More in favor of “I feel, therefore I am” than of “I think, therefore I am”, she is aware that it is feelings that govern her life above thought and knowledge.

Thus, Verso Loose is, above all, a novel about characters whose backbone is the figure of Sandra Martos, the main protagonist of the story, whom we follow on a journey that goes from adolescence to maturity. Around her, characters such as Ximena, La Equis, stand out, with whom she will live the love story that upsets the north of her compass; Xavi, his friend since childhood; Isa, the monitor who will open the doors of life beyond respectability; Julio Estruch, the teacher who will change her name and describe her as a loose verse, in addition to her relatives, mainly her mother and father, and her friend from the town, the peculiar Noe. Loose Verse is an intense, poignant and tremendously human novel that illuminates the pain of childhood, the loss of friendship and the erosion of love.