La historia de los vertebrados
The History of the Vertebrate | Random House, 2023
«On the 20th of December 2015, I became a mother, and I lost my mind. [...] That same day, Spain voted in elections in which a new party participated for the first time [...], and the hope of change hung over the day. At dusk, when I was counting contractions in the labour room, the country was counting seats. And both of those stories came together in a new life for me, because one of those seats was going to be mine. The same day my children were born, I became a deputy in Congress.»
What should have been the happiest day in the narrator’s life, becomes the beginning of a crazy story. Her anxiety takes hold, and the weight of the world falls on her shoulders twice over: she must care for her new-born twins, and give a voice to those who have trusted her with their vote.
La historia de los vertebrados delves into a personal wound to bring out universal struggles and connections. It is a journey through art, literature, mythology, and the history of medicine. Mar García Puig masterfully transforms her personal experience into a story that tells us about all the women who have ever felt that sanity was leaving them and to tell us of all the men who have silenced them, men protected by centuries of science, myths and politics.
«The book of the year.» Juan José Millás
«A wonderful hybrid book, as monumental as it is intimate. Her words resonate simultaneously with our political and poetic sensibility: with La historia de los vertebrados, all of us crazy women understand the reason behind our melancholy, and we start to sing.» Marta Sanz
«Freedom is therapeutic, someone wrote on the wall of an abandoned madhouse. That inscription is projected onto Mar García Puig’s extraordinarily free book, as well conceived as it is executed. A powerful testimony of her experience of puerperal madness. A delirious and sane tapestry that weaves in various directions.» Enrique Vila-Matas
«About the madness of mothers, their weaknesses and their strengths, often two sides of the same coin. An erudite book, tender and tough, and always honest.» Katixa Agirre
«A unique, brave, and amazing book that ties together the intimate and the historical, the familiar and the mythological, poetry and politics, love and pain, madness and lucidity, to delicately illuminate one of the darkest faces of motherhood.» Isaac Rosa
«An intimate story of the thunderous explosion of affections that motherhood means, a story that is in turn political. Mar García Puig gives us the gift of her powerful experiences as a new mother and a new deputy, and with them she traces a link with literature, theatre, philosophy and art throughout the centuries. Reading La historia de los vertebrados, it is impossible not to be reminded of Deborah Levy’s or Maggie Nelson’s memoirs.» Luna Miguel
«We really admire The History of Vertebrates. Above all what excites me is the way that Mar takes an unfamiliar topic, postnatal psychosis, and then uses it as a way of opening up new perspectives on a cluster of much more familiar topics: gender, mental health, maternal ambivalence. The writing is fantastic – so controlled and assured, even as it enters such slippery terrain – and the way that Mar seamlessly glides between history, critique, and her own experience is really impressive. At a every level the writing is so crisp and distilled; every sentence really pulls its own weight. It’s easy to see that The History will sit alongside the very best personal essays by Deborah Levy, Maggie Nelson, and Leslie Jamison.» - Will Rees, acquiring editor at Peninsula Press
World English: Peninsula Press; France: Globe; Film: TK