"With depth and truth, Marta Jiménez Serrano tells us the journey from childhood to early adulthood. Beautiful." Elvira Lindo
Who is Belaundia Fu? She is Marta’s best friend at seven years old: the invisible friend who, in those moments when things don’t go as planned and not even grandma can comfort her, sits with her and waits until she feels better. Belaundia Fu is the sensible, ideal, and unfailing voice that, when Marta is sixteen and even though she would rather not listen, tells her the hard truths: for example, that boy, Charlie, is not good for her. But when Marta is already twenty-two, when she has graduated, when she is starting to make the decisions that will shape the rest of her life, what is Belaundia Fu still doing there? She’s still there because she is the one who, always, tells Marta her own story. Who is Belaundia Fu?, we ask ourselves; yet, the question that truly matters is: who is Marta?
Luminous and moving, Los nombres propios is an exploration of identity and the relationship we establish with the world around us. Dominated by a narrative voice of exceptional maturity, Marta Jiménez Serrano’s first novel reflects on how we come to become who we are, on the very fact of growing up, and the way we do it: learning to name what matters to us.
