Umami by Laia Jufresa

Author:Laia Jufresa
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction;Exciting;Young writer;Mexico;Mexico City;Agatha Christie;Mystery;Summer;Past;Inventive;Funny;Tender;Love;English PEN
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2016-05-23T14:46:53+00:00

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I gave Marina the Joaquín Sorolla book today. I think it would have made Noelia happy. Or maybe not, because it was her favorite, but she definitely would have agreed that if having it around depresses me, better to pass it on to the aspiring painter.

While I was teaching in Madrid, Noelia came and spent two weeks with me and became obsessed with the Sorolla Museum, mainly because it was right next to the house and had a cool yard where you could sit and read under a tree. It didn’t have a café, which meant there weren’t any waiters: Noelia didn’t rub along with Madrid’s waiters. Some afternoons we’d go together to see the Sorollas. Art wasn’t her thing on the whole, but after a few glasses of wine and some tapas, boy, did she get into her painting. On the weekends, which is to say, on the days when we would head out for an aperitif, Noelia would refuse to wear her glasses; a vain habit which also meant she only saw blurry versions of Sorolla’s oils. Where others would stand back and appreciate a vast landscape from afar, she’d have to get right up close, and saw nothing but brushstrokes. The clumsy chaos of oil paint smudged on canvas with a spatula; the distorted, screwball delight that were Sorolla’s dabs up close convinced Noelia that she was admiring an abstract painter. Before we went back to Mexico I got her the exhibition catalog. She flicked through it with her surgical glasses on and was utterly taken aback, a little disappointed even. But later she grew fond of Sorolla, and the catalogue was always lying around somewhere in the living room.

Along with the book, I gave Marina a photo of Noelia and commissioned a portrait.

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