Plants Don't Drink Coffee

(Paperback)

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Description

Unai Elorriaga gives voice to unassuming characters, to 'small' people with 'small' lives; he magnifies things that often go unnoticed. Four stories narrated from different perspectives crisscross throughout this single novel. In the first-person, the young Tomas - who wants above all else to be intelligent - tells us why it is so important for him to catch a blue dragonfly and introduces his extended (and eccentric) family to us one by one.

Reviews

Unai Elorriaga does away with the boundaries and coordinates of con- ventional literature and takes them elsewhere: to the surprising literary territory of a writer with no hang-ups. Harkaitz Cano

Short sentences, measured words, dialogues pregnant with silences . . . all can be found in this lively narrative. It is the characters, the stories, and above all, the transparency and gracefulness of the childs outlook that add freshness and strength to Elorriagas latest. Berria

In these stories there is a psychological process, a learning curve, a pain- ful jump toward crucial knowledge. In Plants Dont Drink Coffee that jump takes place toward the end, which helps the story glide along joyously, aided by the novels two main strengths: the innocent but brilliant, and almost shrewd language of the child narrator and the abundance of secondary stories. El Pas

Plants Dont Drink Coffee must be understood from a double perspective: as an approach to reality from a non-realist position and also as the practice of pure creativity. El Mundo

This is the last book that made us cry. It made us cry with a wonderful hurt that made us remember what life was like. If you havent read Plants Dont Drink Coffee by Unai Elorriaga you should run out and purchase it, and you should drag it across your eyes. Dont put it at the bottom of a stack. Dont make it the caboose of some glorified book-domino train. Its set in the Basque country of Spain. It contains rugby, and dragon flies, and carpentry competitions, and old love letters looked over. We cant tell you much else, because it would ruin the tale. Each narrative, in the four narrative split story, is packed with rose-petal scented suspense. Dark Sky Magazine

Author Bio

Unai Elorriaga was born in 1973 in Bilbao, where he is currently a professor at the Instituto Labairu. He is the author of three novels written in Basque and self-translated into Spanish, including Van't Hoffen ilea (Van't Hoff 's Hair), and his 2002 debut, SPrako Tranbia (A Tram to SP), winner of Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Narrativa. Elorriaga's numerous anthologized short stories have also been widely acclaimed. Amaia Gabantxo is a literary translator, writer, and book critic. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals and newspapers, including the Times Literary Supplement and The Independent. Her translation of Anjel Lertxundi's Perfect Happiness was released by the University of Nevada Press in 2007. Gabantxo moonlights as a flamenco singer.