A debut novel buried in potatoes and family silence
In «Terres minuscules», Catarina Gomes traces how one family's obsessions and secrets shape the daughter who tries to leave them behind.
Catarina Gomes publishes her first novel, «Terres minuscules», reviewed by Le Temps' books section. The story follows Claudia, an only child whose upbringing is dominated by potatoes: the family car returning from trips sags under sacks of them, the pantry is never allowed to run low, and when it does, a grandmother restocks it from her own field.
According to Le Temps, Claudia's parents, who are first cousins, live withdrawn in a cramped apartment, so anxious to avoid attention that their behavior becomes suspicious in itself. Beneath the family's attachment to the land and its harvests, the novel gradually uncovers a closely guarded secret, which Le Temps describes the author as excavating 'with humor and melancholy.'
When an accident kills Claudia's parents along with the season's last harvest, Claudia, who has become an interior architect, empties out the family home, potatoes included, and replaces it with a minimalist, resolutely urban life of her own. Le Temps frames the book as an inquiry into what older generations pass down to those who follow them, whether or not the inheritance is one they chose.
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