What the author says...

Terrassa, 1969. Writer

Writing is rhythm. In the opening paragraphs you have to hit on that rhythm. A style that sounds good but doesn't sound as if it's been written. As Rodoreda said, "It's difficult to write well". Normally we do not know how to write, but when you get two or three lines with their own identity that work independently, then you are fine. In the end, for the author, what is important is not whether it happened or not, but whether it could happen. You have to construct the story as if it had really happened. You need to make the lie as perfect as possible to make it plausible to the reader.

“Has de construir el relat com si hagués passat de veritat”. Interview for Núvol (05/10/2015)

What the critics say...

Beyond the expressive clarity, the sense of narrative rhythm and the remarkable capacity for reminiscence and observation – he succeeds, for example, in differentiating the sense of a working day from the weekend and providing the reader with the feeling that identifies the last day of the holidays – this novel features all the elements that a seasoned Puig reader will immediately recognize: the protagonist and narrator, from an adult perspective, remembering and longing for the lost world of childhood and adolescence; the summers spent in the village; the place where the parents recede into the background and the children roam free, as if with a spontaneous doubt about the seriousness of the world; the everyday trivial snapshots of life and the pleasant circuit of nostalgia, desire and tender feeling that benefit from the fact that they rarely cross into the sickly sweet [...]. And, of course, the element that forms the basis of La vida sense la Sara Amat [Life without Sara Amat], that moment of morality in which one inadvertently grows up. The peace of childhood transforms into the battle ground of adult life, the individual and clandestine life of each individual – the life of the protagonist and of Sara Amat, shut up in the bedroom – bears no relation to the public face, full of secrets and appearances, and the sense of loneliness not only leads to boredom but also to something else, something much harder to describe. The protagonist of La vida sense la Sara Amat goes through the difficult journey of learning how to keep a secret and understand the line that separates truth from falsehood. Puig never goes over the top and rarely goes in for sermons and, while there may be some that reproach him for a lack of depth, nobody can deny his mastery of the artifice of literature and the art of effortless spontaneity.

Ponç Puigdevall. “L’enyorança de la infantesa”, El País. Quadern (24/03/2016).

When you read this novel [La vida sense Sara Amat], with its fable-like quality, a story to be told in the middle of winter, as you sit wrapped up warm around a blazing fire, you have the feeling that you are not the one reading it at all, that it is being told by someone else: it glides along and flows with admirable seamlessness (and ease).

Almost without realizing it, without being aware, without any visible effort, you become immersed in the narrative and do not emerge – or want to emerge – until the end. The narrator has learned from Shahrazad regarding the importance of the reader always wanting to know more and being unable to put the book down and, what is even more key, of the impression it leaves on them once finished; of ensuring it remains with them once they have closed the book.

Xavier Serrahima. “Pep Puig presenta La vida sense la Sara Amat a La Setmana”, Núvol (04/03/2016).

Puig offers his readers prose with a touch as soft as velvet, and sometimes as cotton wool, with luminous settings, in which parents and uncles, grandparents and grandchildren experience conflicts that suck them into an airbag of understanding and a fear of crashing. There is a common understanding within the laws of life, an awareness of the superiority of women, a feeling of attraction for their capacity to self-govern, that disarms men.
[...] The love of my life at the moment is a restrained book in which you feel a rushing of blood and a rawness of flesh: a desire to exist, to feel, to break free from an obsession over a lost childhood.

Julià Guillamon. “Els amors difícils”, La Vanguardia. Culturas (31/10/2015).

[In L’home que torna (The Man who Returns)] Pep Puig had the talent to construct a story using the tools of simplicity and an astute nose – a rare thing in new authors – when it comes to selecting the materials that give L’home que torna an air of calculated ambiguity, of storytelling with the minimum resources possible that immediately captivates the reader. A story written with simplicity, with good taste, with a realistic register that seamlessly reconciles the feelings of his characters with the receptivity of the reader.

Joan Josep Isern. “La difícil senzillesa”, Avui. Cultura (19/10/2005).

Pep Puig is one of those rare Catalan writers that have not studied philology. He does not come to literature through an obsession with language, nor has he ever professed to be an intellectual. He is probably the paradigm of a writer that does not intellectualize his writing but seeks that ease that is so difficult to achieve. Pep's art is both difficult and easy. It is often said that a writer needs to build a story as if it had really happened. Pep Puig tells his stories through feelings, with the aim of connecting with the reader on an emotional level.

Bernat Puigtobella. “Qui és en Pep Puig?”, Núvol (11/12/2015).