La señora Potter no es exactamente Santa Claus
» 2021 Ojo Crítico Prize for Fiction
» 2021 Premis Ciutat de Barcelona Honorable Mention
» 2021 Finestres Prize for Spanish-language Fiction
» 2021 Las librerías Recomiendan Fiction Prize
» 2021 Kelvin 505 Prize for best original novel in Spanish published for the first time in Spain
» One of La Vanguardia, ABC and El Mundo’s Books of the Year
La señora Potter no es exactamente Santa Claus, a tragicomical ode to freedom and to the destruction of all things preconceived.
The small town of Kimberly Clark Weymouth is known for its perennially inclement weather, frosty blizzards, and heavy snowfall. It is also famous, thanks the Louise Feldman’s classic children’s book Mrs. Potter Isn’t Exactly Santa Claus. That fame enabled Randal Peltzer to open a successful souvenir shop. Every day, the town welcomes Feldman’s eccentric readers and, begrudgingly, lives off of the tourist revenue. But what would happen if Billy, Randal’s son, decided to shutter the shop and skip town? Could Kimberly Clark Weymouth remain the same, or would it have to transform into something new? In the exuberant prose and boundless imagination of Laura Fernández, we discover a powerful tale of maternity, creation, resignation, art as a refuge, and the loneliness of the misunderstood. Fernández has given us a cross between an adult Roald Dahl novel and the tale of a mad, digressive T.C. Boyle who has read too much Joy Williams. La señora Potter no es exactamente Santa Claus aims to torpedo the very notion of story, or at least the notion of a singular story about what we are, because if we are anything, we are limitless possibilities.
PRESS
«This is absolutely MARVELOUS! And so funny! Wow, is all I can say. How can this not be in English? It’s insane. Laura Fernández is a brilliant writer.» Abigail Thomas
«My favourite book of the year is undoubtedly La Señora Potter no es exactamente Santa Claus, by Spaniard Laura Fernández. It is a book 600 pages long, of stories within stories, set in a fictional village, and it is a delight. It has a brutal melancholy, but it is very funny. It is a reflection about maternity and the possibilities of stories and life, about what it is to be trapped and what it is to be free, and somehow, also about writing. I laughed, cried, was left dazzled. Total favourite.» Mariana Enríquez
«Brilliant, absurd, the first masterpiece of a New Age. Pure talent. I’m going to get sick of gifting it. And anyone who doesn’t like it I’m taking off my friends list. Forever.» Sara Mesa
«Laura Fernández is the Tarantino of Spanish fiction.» Najat El Hachmi
«Reading this novel, the whole time I’m saying to myself, ‘thank you, Laura, for bringing back (and renewing) something that our literature never should have given up: sharp fantasy, storytelling, and the colossal construction of a parallel world. Brilliant.» Agustín Fernández Mallo
«The novel, let’s just say it, is prodigious: monumental and intimate, icy and warm, lively and very sad, easy and difficult, of a childish but terribly adult purity. That is to say, audacious and contradictory, which is what literature should aspire to in a world of silly certainties. (…) if Flaubert said that style is an absolute way of seeing the world, Laura Fernández, who has invented a style, is capable of inventing and igniting worlds as well.» Miqui Otero
«Reading Laura Fernández is like stepping through Alice’s mirror. The appearance of unreality masks a brilliant, deeply existential novel that questions the purpose of art, loneliness, motherhood, and the strange and absurd magic of writing. In short: a novel about how incredibly weird and amazing it is to be alive.» Lucía Lijtmaer
«At some point, Fernández invented her own language, and this means there exists no other Spanish-language writer with her cadence, lexicon, and rhythm. Its origin is the pleasure of reading: Hence, it sometimes reminds us of a popular 80s translation, sometimes of the American postmodern narrative, sometimes of Charles Dickens… It is enjoyment as a source of grand style. (…) I read Laura Fernández and I’m once again the teenager that spent summers reading mountains of Stephen King or Anne Rice; and simultaneously, the student that absorbed caffeine at an industrial dosage in order to face, every night, a new classic of the Big Contemporary Narrative. There is in Fernández’s books an appeal to all forms of genuine reading pleasure.» Nadal Suau, El Cultural
«The kind of novel Laura Fernández was born to write (ie: another Laura Fernández novel) and the kind of novel we were dying to read (ie: another Laura Fernández novel). And that on this celebratory occasion, in addition to her usual powerful batteries, she includes snow. Lots of it and, luckily, on many pages. Many pages of Laura Fernández. Happy Holidays.» Rodrigo Fresán, author
«A whole universe, with its galaxies, constellations, and black holes (…) through which glide, like the skaters on the cover, ‘Gremlins’ and Roald Dahl; Nathanael West and Stephen King; Ray Bradbury and Thomas Pynchon.» David Morán, ABC
«If anything runs through the entire novel it is the impulse of creation as a liberating and dark force that sweeps and absorbs everything as if it were a vampire.» Leticia Blanco, El Mundo
«Every chapter of this book is a surprise and a gift, but not like those that accumulate beneath the Christmas tree, but rather like those truly magical ones that transport us to a bleak territory that we recognise, the kind we want to return to as soon as we leave, because after all it is a lot like us.» Sònia Hernández, La Vanguardia/Culturas
«Here’s what Laura Fernández’s latest novel is about: inventing, creating, renouncing what you are, dreaming of what you could be.» Laura Barrachina, El Ojo Crítico
«Your neurons will combust when you realize what’s emerging is a DEMOLISHING reflection on how humans create fictions to survive.» Jorge Carrión, La Vanguardia
«We will highly recommend this novel this Christmas (and always) because it has it all: literary ambition, a playful spirit, a mix of genres, imagination, winks…» Letras Corsarias, bookstore (Salamanca, Spain)
TRANSLATIONS
Italy: Solferino; Japan: Hayakawa
