A delicate, sober, and vital book about family bonds, absence, and writing. A dazzling elegy.
Ten years after his father's death, the narrator of this book decides to write it. With the shadow of suicide depriving him of mourning, he wonders: is it possible to find the words for a farewell that never happened? Thus, this personal and intimate account becomes a quest to understand how family ties are forged, what silence condemns, and where the truth of a story hides.
But writing fails, and the author turns to the biographies of writers who took their own lives and their final notes to reconstruct a possible, tentative goodbye. Only with a polyphonic and choral narration can he return to the forgotten corners of his own life, where memory turns into emptiness.
Reliquia then becomes a family chronicle that includes a reflection on the arrival at writing and the meaning of creation; a text about death and absence that leads to the most dazzling moments of friendship and love. With a restrained, straightforward style, Pol Guasch has crafted a delicate and vital book: a dazzling elegy.
