LA GATERA

(Amsterdam, Ara Llibres, 2012 – Navona Editorial, 2018)
J.M. Casero Award 2011
Llança de Sant Jordi Award 2012
Crítica dels Escriptors Valencians Award 2013
Novel: adult
Literary style: narrative
Language: catalan, spanish
Genre: nouvelle, psychological novel, self fiction

Rachel inherits two symmetrical floors. One leads to the street and the other to an inner courtyard, from where an orange cat is schooled. Opening a catwalk in the wall that separates the two homes will become an intriguing path to their identity.

La Gatera is a novel written from the threshold: an open hole in a wall that connects two worlds with no apparent intersection. Reality and fiction, life and death, masculinity and femininity are on the line where the author, the characters, and who knows if the reader, mirror each other.

An intense and moving story about a young girl who decides to rebuild her life after a traumatic incident. Settled in an old manor house that she has just inherited, Raquel begins to relate to her new neighbors, at the same time as she restarts a new life in the city. Over the course of a year – from August to August – friendships with Ricard, a university colleague, and Arnau, the grandson of the fifth-grader’s neighbor, as well as the construction of a peculiar catwalk that will connect the flat of Raquel with that of her neighbor, will fill the painful void of her past with new hopes and a new look to the future.

A short novel full of sensitivity and small doses of poetry. A story that, after reading it, is hard to forget.

Visit the translation to Spanish.

«Muriel Villanueva is not new, or innocent as she wants to make us think. With only three novels she explored everything, always caring with the singular voices.»

Isidre Grau

«A prodigy of seduction and narrative precision. The only thing that tastes bad is finishing your reading.»

Sebastià Alzamora

«A captivating and very sexy story, a genetic cross between the freshness and shamelessness of Holden Caulfield and the disturbing and at the same time meticulously retail atmospheres of Murakami.»

Mercedes Abad

«A great novel that left the jury with their open mouths.»

Guillem Terribas, Llibreria 22, J. M. Casero Award.