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WORK TITLE: The House of Silence
WORK NOTES: trans by Mara Faye Lethem
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 3/20/1961
WEBSITE:
CITY: Barcelona
STATE:
COUNTRY: Spain
NATIONALITY: Catalan
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born March 20, 1961.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer. Catalunya Radio, Barcelona, Spain, journalist, 1986–; Televisió de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, former journalist.
AWARDS:Premi Llibreter, 2011, for La nevada del cucut; Alghero Donna prize, 2015, for Italian translation of The House of Silence.
WRITINGS
Contributor to the Web site, Osona.com.
SIDELIGHTS
Blanca Busquets is a journalist and writer based in Barcelona, Spain. Since 1986, she has worked as a journalist for Catalunya Radio and has also worked for Televisió de Catalunya. Busquets has contributed to the Osona.com Web site. She has written novels in the Catalan language, which have been translated into Spanish, English, Italian, and various other languages. Busquets’s first novel, released in 2003, is Presó de neu. Her 2010 book, La nevada del cucut, won the 2011 Premi Llibreter, an important Catalan literary prize. Other novels by Busquets include El jersei, Palabras a medias, La casa del silencio, También esto pasará, and Jardí a l’obaga.
In 2016, Busquets released an English version of La casa del silencio called The House of Silence. It was translated by Mara Faye Lethem. The volume features four narrators, each of whom has a personal connection to a well-known composer called Karl T. One of the narrators in Maria, who is originally from the southern Spanish province of Andalusia. Maria spent four decades as Karl T.’s maid in Barcelona. A talented violinist named Anna is another narrator in the book. Anna is an excellent technician, but she does not incorporate her emotions into her performances. Teresa, a lovelorn woman who has been Anna’s violent teacher, is the third narrator, and the fourth is Mark, son of Karl T. and a composer in his own right, who has been stuck in East Germany. Each of the narrators discusses his or her relationship with Karl T., whose power over them remains long after his death. They are each connected to Karl T.’s lost violin. The instrument, which is three centuries old, is said to have possessed a magical tonal quality that made for extraordinarily beautiful music. Maria mistakenly threw the instrument out with the garbage.
Critics offered favorable assessments of The House of Silence. A Publishers Weekly reviewer asserted: “Busquet’s ode to music is an entertaining performance surveying envy, love, and revenge–with a handful of missed notes.” A writer on the Kirkus Reviews Web site commented: “Combining elements of the folk tale, mystery, and romance, Busquets’ novel is bound to please readers with its new take on Old World charm—and the secrets we keep even from ourselves.” “The House of Silence presents us with the age-old premise of the butterfly effect, but it does so in such a way that leaves us captivated,” asserted a contributor to the Pterodáctilo Cultural Journal Web site.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, August 22, 2016, review of The House of Silence, p. 84.
ONLINE
Blanca Busquets Home Page, http://www.blancabusquets.cat/ (May 22, 2017).
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (August 1, 2016), review of The House of Silence.
Pontas Agency Web site, http://www.pontas-agency.com/ (May 22, 2017), author profile.
Pterodáctilo Cultural Journal, http://www.pterodactilo.com/ (September 19, 2016), review of The House of Silence.*
Blanca Busquets (Barcelona, 1961) is a writer and journalist. In 2011 her fifth novel, La nevada del cucut, was awarded the Premi Llibreter, the Catalan Booksellers Award, a significant prize which immediately became a milestone in her literary career. She is now translated into English, Spanish, Italian, French, Norwegian, Polish, Russian and German and is recognized unanimously as a prominent figure of contemporary Catalan literature. Her novels explore women’s feelings and often deal with family secrets.
Work
A Garden in the Shade
Half Spoken Words
The House of Silence
The Last Snow
Who Knows Where The Sky Is
The Jumper
Train to Puigcerdà
Snow Prison
Blanca Busquets is a Catalan writer and a radio journalist. She began writing at the age of twelve and has published seven novels, translated to Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Norwegian, and French. Her fifth novel, La Nevada Del Cucut, was the winner of the 2011 Catalan Booksellers’ Prize. She lives in Barcelona, Spain.
Blanca Busquets i Oliu (Barcelona, 1961), is a catalan writer, journalist and philologist, whose life is marked by the written words.
She has published several novels: Presó de neu (Proa, 20013); and, with the editor Rosa dels Vents, El jersei (2006), Tren a Puigcerdà (2007), Vés a saber on és el cel (2009), La nevada del cucut (2010), La casa del silenci (2013) and Paraules a mitges (2014). Her last novel, Jardí a l’obaga (2016) is published again with Proa. Her books have been translated to spanish, italian, german, russian, polish, norwegian, french and english.
She usally does talks and speeches about books in Catalonia, and also in Spain as well as in towns like Alghero (Italy), Moscow, Cracow, Leipzig or Berlin. She Participated in the in Warsaw book fair 2016 as part of the Catalan delegation of writers.
She has been working as a radio journalist at Catalunya Ràdio since 1986 and has produced several programs. She also worked for the Catalan television station Televisió de Catalunya for seven years, and writers for Osona.com.
She is the favourite author in the library of Llicà de Vall.
She won the price Llibreter 2011 for La Nevada del cucut
And the price Alghero Donna 2015 of literature and journalism for the translation to italian of The house of silence
QUOTED: "Busquet's ode to music is an entertaining performance surveying envy, love, and revenge–with a handful of missed notes."
The House of Silence
263.34 (Aug. 22, 2016): p84.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The House of Silence
Blanca Busquets, trans. from the Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem. Regan Arts, $25.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-68245-030-7
A quartet of voices narrates Busquets's first book translated into English (La Nevada Del Cucut) formulaic but often lovely novel of music and romance. Each narrator takes turns explaining their relationship to a 300-year-old rare violin and, through this, their relationship to the famed and secretive composer Karl T: Teresa, who found the violin as a child while dumpster-diving with her mother; Maria, Karl's longtime maid who accidentally threw away the violin; spoiled and spiteful Anna, who was Teresa's violin student and now will be performing alongside her; and Mark, Karl's son, a less accomplished composer. The four are drawn together at a performance done in honor of the now deceased Karl. The stories each narrator tells are deeply intertwined and contain soap opera twists and turns: a secret pregnancy, a not-so-accidental death, a revelatory letter, and a momentous concert where tricks are played and truths are revealed. While each character maintains an independent, intriguing emotional arc, the voices are often similar, in part due to an overuse of undescriptive 'dialogue. With a fast pace and plenty of plot twists, Busquet's ode to music is an entertaining performance surveying envy, love, and revenge--with a handful of missed notes. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The House of Silence." Publishers Weekly, 22 Aug. 2016, p. 84+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA461609275&it=r&asid=ffc0c18650ad94ad959d2b4c3aad06b7. Accessed 8 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A461609275
QUOTED: "Combining elements of the folk tale, mystery, and romance, Busquets’ novel is bound to please readers with its new take on Old World charm—and the secrets we keep even from ourselves."
THE HOUSE OF SILENCE
by Blanca Busquets, translated by Mara Faye Lethem
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Ten years after a famous composer’s death, four musicians are brought together for a concert memorializing the strange man who touched each of their lives in surprising ways.
Late one evening, two violinists with a complicated history, a conductor struggling to live up to his father’s memory, and an elderly maid with a secret attend a tense rehearsal in a Berlin concert hall. As the novel unfolds, Catalan writer Busquets introduces us to each of their voices: there’s Maria, an Andalusian maid who cared for the enigmatic composer Karl T. in his Barcelona apartment for more than 40 years; Anna, a prima donna violinist who plays with virtuosic skill but no heart; Anna’s former violin teacher Teresa, suffering from the wounds of a tragic romance; and Mark, Karl T.’s son, separated from his father by the harsh realities of the Berlin Wall. Their overlapping perspectives provide fractured glimpses of Karl T., the German composer who, even in death, holds them each in thrall. Little do they know that their lives and careers are also bound together by a single mistake: the loss of Karl T.’s prized possession, a beautiful violin that “made magic...as if it held the sun inside it.” In contrast to the complex emotional lives of the characters, Busquets' writing (and Lethem’s translation) lends a fairy-tale flatness to the tightly woven mystery, leading the reader through a maze of intrigue, loss, and romance with clear, brisk prose. Busquets’ dreamy tale is the more interesting for its attention to female competition, class, linguistic barriers, and the specter of fascism that haunts both Spain and Eastern Europe. Her novel of music and fate confirms a universal suspicion: “sometimes it seems we know everything about somebody and, really, we know nothing, or very little.”
Combining elements of the folk tale, mystery, and romance, Busquets’ novel is bound to please readers with its new take on Old World charm—and the secrets we keep even from ourselves.
Pub Date: Oct. 4th, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68245-030-7
Page count: 256pp
Publisher: Regan Arts
Review Posted Online: July 20th, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1st, 2016
QUOTED: "The House of Silence presents us with the age-old premise of the butterfly effect, but it does so in such a way that leaves us captivated."
Book Review: Blanca Busquets’s The House of Silence
2016-09-19
the-house-of-silence-9781682450307_hr
Both mysterious and romantic, Catalan writer and journalist Blanca Busquets’s The House of Silence demonstrates how music can unknowingly bind together even the most distant people. Over the course of the narrative, we eagerly learn about the lives of these four disparate characters in early 20th century Spain, whose only connection is the grave, philandering, yet kind-hearted music conductor who in some way impacts each one of their lives.
Set against the backdrop of post-War Europe, Busquets effectively highlights social conditions, linguistic barriers (and how these are crossed), as well as the transnational reality of war-torn families. Throughout the novel, careers are made, friendships are formed, and love grows, yet Busquets does not shy away from exploring the darker sides of jealousy and revenge, revealing how our bitterness does not only hurt those around us, but will eventually take a toll on ourselves. Juggling the egos of her musicians, Busquets also demonstrates the painful stakes of competition, where sometimes the line between competing for solos and competing for romantic attention is very thin.
The House of Silence presents us with the age-old premise of the butterfly effect, but it does so in such a way that leaves us captivated in the landscape of Eastern European performance halls and Spanish concertos and without ignoring the real world conditions of the time. Busquets harnesses the transformative power of music not only to compose a rich and complex tale, but also to impart upon her audience the value of our interwoven stories and to remind us how our fates are never truly experienced individually.
The House of Silence will be released on October 4th by Regan Arts.