This week we interviewed the writer Jerónimo Tristant, who recently won the Ateneo de Sevilla Novel Prize 2017. The work, published by Algaida publishing house, It is titled It is never too late. This crime novel is set in the Aragonese Pyrenees, where the mysterious disappearance of some young women seems to repeat the investigation into some crimes that happened in 1973. Tristante (Murcia, 1969) He is a Secondary School Biology and Geology teacher.. Among the published novels are: Chronicle of Jufré (2001), The red in the blue (2004) o The mystery of Casa Aranda (2007), the first installment of the Víctor Ros saga, a detective in 19th century Madrid that has been brought to the small screen as a series. In 2009 public 1969, and in 2010 continued the successful saga with a new adventure by detective Víctor Ros, publishing The enigma of Calabria street. In 2011 public The valley of shadows a novel set in the Civil War; in 2012 Oceans of time, with it he resumed the adventures of Víctor Ros and continued them in The last night of Víctor Ros (2013) y Víctor Ros and the great theft of Spanish gold (2015). GINÉS J. VERA
After getting into the shoes of male protagonists, such as, his famous detective Víctor Ros, What was it like to do it in the shoes of a forty-year-old woman who is fond of detective novels in It's never too late?
Well I had a very good time, I liked it a lot. It has been a great experience; besides, who is fond of detective novels and collects medical leaflets. Then I thought a lot about this.. Do you know that when you start doing interviews and doing promo, how they ask you so many things, you delve deeper into things you have done in the novel and why you have done them. Y, Of course, one of the first things I thought about is: And why haven't I done a novel with a female protagonist until now??
Of course, It's not because I can't get into the role of a woman., because in all my novels there are a lot of female characters and many of them important, such as Clara Alvear, by Victor Ros. And of course, said: and why haven't I done this? Then I realized why it was, And like all the novels I write, they are set in another time., well of course, there were no female templars, nor can I put a detective in the 19th century who was a woman because there were no women in the police, Not even in the Blue Division were there women. So, Of course, I realized that it was because of this, because they were historical periods in which the role of women was very residual at a social and professional level because the poor were totally marginalized.
Now that I have come to the current era I have been able to make a woman the protagonist, to a girl who has been a housewife, more than the gender issue, I wanted to emphasize that he does not have a professional dedication, and what does that do?, helps the reader enter, to empathize. You already know that detective novels allow the reader to play detective., empathize with that character and say: this could happen to me; with which, I think it worked well and I really liked it..
I think this novel has had a point of catharsis, has been something of a lifeline in a difficult personal moment. Part of what managed to excite him seems to have also infected the jury of the Ateneo de Sevilla award, Isn't that so? Congratulations.
It is a novel that was born on the right foot because it has only given me joy.. The first one he gave me is the one you point out. I was in a somewhat delicate personal moment and then what did I do??, well what I know: write. Normally, storytellers write almost better when we are at our worst.. Maybe because our world, the literary world, It is a world that you set up almost like a refuge, and well, I had this story pending because I hadn't been able to get into it for a while., and just when I detached myself a little from these commitments and so on, I found myself with time and I started to do it.
I had a good time, Being in a current era it was more relaxed to write. Of course, It was then that I realized how difficult it is to write a novel with a historical setting., because you need a year or so just to be able to start writing, and then I realize that I am in tension, because I'm with a map of the city, what if a book here, what if another book there... And telling me: Had this character already died?? Looking at every piece of information because you can't make a mistake and you're in tension. And instead, writing something set in the current era, you just let the story flow and tell it. Then of course, how I felt very free in that aspect, I found myself like when I started: writing for pure distraction, something you like, like a hobby, And of course, all those things have been noted in the novel.
And then comes the Ateneo de Sevilla, now success; It is working very well commercially, we have sold out the first edition, Let's go for the second edition..., It is a novel that gives me nothing but joy.
The landscape is a state of mind, they say, and in this novel it is very important. I am left with the detail of that urbanization where a character lives, Fedra Hernandez, in which the streets are named after fish.
That really exists... When they come to the south, to my land, to look for a person who could have something to do with the case, I located it in an urbanization, These typical resorts that are now in my land, focused on the tourists who have not come later, and it seemed curious to me; I noticed one, and all the street names are after fish.
It is true that the landscape is one more character in the detective novel.. Here I am going to a place that seems very exotic to me.: the Pyrenees, the cold, the forest masses… I am from Murcia, unfortunately my land is a wasteland, and the contrast gives me a lot of options. And then I realized, doing interviews, which is because I have here an imprint engraved in blood and fire of Twin Peaks and David Lynch, that when I was young I was very impressed, and deep down those influences that you carry there, they come out... Those scenarios turn me on a lot.
