CARRANZA, MAITE / MAITE CARRANZA I GIL DOLZ DEL CASTELLAR
Maite Carranza had previously dealt with topics like sexual abuse orprostitution in her career as script writer. This triggered off herinterest in writing a novel centred in these complex social mattersbut it was the cases of Natascha Kampusch and Elizabeth Fritzl inAustria that put her to work. Her motivation was to contribute to thedenunciation that is arising from many voices that, until now, havebeen silenced by a society that prefers to shut its eyes concerningissues that consider taboo or shameful. ?This is a novel that clearly breaks the age borders, grapping also the adult reader, asking forhis attention?(El Periódico). The key is the structure of the novel,superbly assembled. Carranza has been inspired by the best crimefiction, building the plot as a mystery to be solved at the end,inviting the reader to put himself in the shoes of the characters inorder to be able to find the clues that will lead to the answers.Poisoned words is the answer to the questions that everybody askedthemselves after hearing about these cases. How is the every day lifeof a person locked? How is to get up without hope every day? How weakwere they when they were kidnapped? Barbara is a teenager whosechildhood was disturbed with violence, whose youth is a nightmare butshe is very far away from understanding the abuse she?s suffered, sheis confused with feelings of hate and love towards the offender,knowing that he is also the only one who keeps her bare connection tothe world, he keeps her alive, after all. When life has been ripped of everything, the smallest human contact, no matter how terrible it can be, gets a value. The plot appears like a puzzle difficult to fit,made up of four different views of the case in first person: that ofthe police officer, the mother of the missing girl, the missing girls? friend and the main character herself. Built using the structure ofa crime fiction, it couldn?t be missing the character of thedetective. In the novel, this role is played by the soon to getretired Inspector Lozano, who always refused to close the case, whotook it almost as personal challenge. Gifted with a fine power ofobservation, completed with his experience and his capacity of empathy towards the weak, in this case the despondent mother, he gives us his account of the case with all the details and cold deductions putforward by the mind of a police officer but with the feelings ofimpotence in front of an unsolved case, especially frustrating forhaving had several suspects that went finally free. The mother?slost inner dialogue made up of guilt, desperation and confusion, gives the most dramatic point to the novel. Devastated, hopeless but unable to stop blaming herself for her daughter?s fate, she lives in thedesperate world of the living dead. The novel completes its mosaicwith Barbara?s best friend, Eva, a key character in the development of events. Her turbulent relationship with her friend introduces us adifferent Barbara, a not so fragile teenager, a complex girl, afurious victim. The fast-paced inner conversations of these maincharacters take the reader into the plot, into an almost oppressiveatmosphere, confused at the beginning but filled with subtle detailsthat the reader will be gathering alongside the development of theplot, to get to the action-packed final pages. This is a novel thatmakes the reader to hold his breath from the beginning to the climax. Rights sold to Brazil, the Netherlands, Korea, Russia, France
