Prologue

(By M. Antonia Oliver)

What green apples smell like? It seems to be slightly acidic odor, a smell even if they are yellowish green, but Martha draws bridge would smell tenderness. Marta and Carlos Cortes, describes within their own words the great pampering grandmother, to the point where the protagonist keeps the grandmother’s ashes to make him company. And are these ashes that smell of green apples, are the sweet smell of death.

Kathleen McNerney, a mutual friend, indeed Kathleen introduced me Carles some years ago, one day I asked why my novels always leaves a grandmother, a nurse or an old woman, generally good woman, full of wisdom, which helps the or the protagonists. The surprise left me stone: I had not noticed, it should have done / written unconsciously, but it was true. Not so long ago I read an interview they did to Carles Cortes, and he had never met either of his two grandmothers, who wrote about them in his earlier novel, Voice of Women, is a grandmother who explains his experiences by nostalgia for grandma. And here’s another surprise: I had not known my grandmothers, perhaps I also may have nostalgia for grandma.

But Marta draw bridges is not a novel of grandmothers. Marta’s grandmother is the conductor of a much more complex history, passing in Alicante and in Naples, a living history, and seen and felt and suffered and enjoyed, especially by Marta, but also by their friends through it , for his lover, his memories and, in particular, by Naples.

I thought Naples is a character almost as important as the protagonist, friends and lovers are breaths of a Neapolitan City of Marta that Carles wants to show us and create the feel and the experience with a fullness of great novel. Riccardo looking for beauty in the containers, Sandro who gives Martha a watercolor with a bridge, Sister Mercedes and his angels, Fabrizio, the lover, a scoundrel, domineering, brash, getting from others what he wants without asking anything, a boy running around the problems, the angel hair slicked who hates the city and the mamma … and Marta among all these aliens in the city, over the roofs of a daily Naples, on streets where there are tourists and there are only Neapolitan, with their classes, writing his novel, finally, drawing their bridges to help to go through life.

Life also passes out through Alicante. For his parents that they do not understand, of which she has fled drawing a bridge that has led to Naples by chance, and end up separating, and this separation makes her aware of Fabrizio. Valentine, her classmate, and his secret as a teenager that we, the readers know from the beginning but she did not want to confess. Her friend Elena, who has also ran out, also by chance, and when they gathered together she notice that she has given her son boy the name Valentine.

Coincidences, secrets, bridges: the circle is closed. Marta comes back to Alicante because Fabrizio has run away in a boat, instead of hating him, begins to hate Naples.

She comes back to the city to get back. And so, Carles Cortes built a bridge between Naples and Alicante. We hope that some day we pass thru it with our literaturized grandmothers.