Carme Riera

The secrets of a diva. A life of success and fame marked by a childhood trauma. 

After losing her voice and surviving a heart attack, the world-famous soprano Barbara Simpson decides to take a break and review some unresolved issues in her life, with the help of her mother's diaries.

It all started on those tours when she was a child, with her parents, who were blues musicians. Proud of their African American origins, they instilled in her an early vocation for music and a capacity for sacrifice that would lead Barbara to a world-famous career. However, the public applause has not silenced the echo of humiliation and shame provoked by a traumatic episode in her childhood. Something that happened in Mallorca, where she moved when she was just eight years old to receive lessons from a famous singer.

Barbara has to return to that remote island to finally face up to an emotional trauma that she has kept buried for far too long. 

“There are books that mark peaks in one's career, and this is one of them. [...] The most complex, interesting, and rounded of Carme Riera's recent books.” La Vanguardia 

“A magnificent novel that has the virtue of making one think, feel, and dream, three things that are hard to find in a single work.” Ara Llibres 

“The return of an author who knows how to weave a novel so that it grows with each page, regardless of the multiplicity of voices, [...] allowing the narration to mature as its foundations are questioned, being aware that her characters, like those of flesh and blood, do not always tell the truth.” The New Barcelona Post 

“[A] complex narrative structure in the service of a plot that has become a clockwork piece integrating different components masterfully managed. [...] Only an author with Carme Riera's experience can firmly sustain and successfully navigate a storyline where the most intense racial and sexual prejudices are also addressed from the perspectives of conflicting cultures. [...] Among the best that Carme Riera has written.” ABC