Ovidian dreams

In Ovid's Metamorphoses human transformations into other beings might be caused by the fury of a god, as a vengeful punishment for a human weakness or virtue.

In Under the Walnut Tree, my novel, human transformation is not the consequence of a god's fury but of a human conflict and a desire for a different vital experience.

As old as human wondering, human transformation into an animal has been a fantastic dream, an expression of the human mind and its conflicts with itself and reality.

Animals are mysterious creatures and a constant reminder of our own unfathomable nature.

A call for attention

Although I wrote my novel Under the Walnut Tree several years ago it continues to be new to anyone who has never heard of it before now.

It might be a fascinating reading for those who like a stylized language and a rather fantastic coming of age story in a landscape of sea coast and mountains.

The Ocean

"El anhelo del océano es omnipresente en el libro" writes a reader, referring to the omnipresence of the sea as an emotional attraction in the Under the Walnut Tree. In effect, in the novel the ocean plays an important role as a spatial element and as a symbolic presence in the world of the protagonist. 

The Begining

 Under the Walnut Tree, the novel I wrote a few years ago and was published by MediaIsla in September 2013, is narrated in the fist person by the protagonist, Ari, a boy of undisclosed age. 

The first page of the narrative gives a first glimpse into the character's personality and points to the nature of the story that is going to be told by him to no one in particular.

 Here are some lines of the first chapter, titled "The End of Summer."

"Sitting there in class I felt like a caged animal. The wild, solitary beast I had imagined to be when playing alone in the woods all summer, had been trapped, cornered to submission by the rules of men. The teacher’s voice was a far away drone, something of a hypnotic spell calling me to sink back in my melancholic daydreaming. I couldn’t avoid looking out of the window to the wooded hills that rolled all the way beyond my sight into my Granddad’s land and the knoll where the black walnut tree, standing tall and imposing, was murmuring in the wind its ancient stories. The ones I had been enjoying all summer long as I spent hours of solitary wondering under its protective shade. Granddad had taught me to go there when in trouble with myself and let the mystery of my childish worries be absorbed by the quiet magnificence of the whispering tree and the surrounding landscape it commanded. Reclining on its bole many an evening I had learned to love the land of my ancestors, with its meandering rives and its hills that in successive increasing waves of green climbed to the coastal mountain range from the ample arch of the beach and dunes."

Reality and imagination

If in literature you are looking for a mirror of reality--and a truly clear mirror--do not read my Under the Walnut Tree, a novel that looks at reality through the looking-glass of fantasy. 

Reality is reflected in landscapes, characters and actions and also in a world that includes in it the realm of imagination, the fabulous side of reality.