Boulder is another portrait of a woman, the second of a triptych.

The narrator of Permafrost never quite cut the strings of family, choosing the path(s) of least resistance, while lamenting not having made more independent choices in her formative years.

Assured Prose Who Art in Metaphor

If the narrator of Permafrost is somewhat unsure, that of Boulder is more certain. The prose is assured, the narrative has pace, the protagonist moves towards what suits her, to freedom – until things change.

The avid descriptions and bold metaphors have me rereading and highlighting passages, like the creation of foam as a wave crashes on itself, they are as natural to the text as the paragraphs within which they roll.

An itinerant cook, she moves from place to place, island to ship, working in the kitchen. Life on the cargo ship suits her, she’s at home in turbulent seas, around those that neither desire nor reject her, a place where there was no need to pretend life had a structure. Rootless, drifting and free.

Freedom In Its Many Forms

I think I’ve discovered what happiness is: whistling the moment you wake up, not getting in anyone’s way, owing no explanations, and falling into bed at daybreak, body addled from exhaustion, and mind free of every last trace of bitterness and dust.

The boat sails up and down the coast of Chile, she rarely disembarks, the only temptation in Chaitén, for a hot shower, fresh linen, and a lurking lust for a lover. That’s where she meets Samsa.

I look at her and she fills every corner of me. My gaze is a rope that catches her and draws her in. She looks up, sees me. She knows.

They begin to see each other, though it is often months between visits. Her lover renames her Boulder.

She doesn’t like my name and gives me a new one. She says I’m like one of those large, solitary rocks in southern Patagonia, pieces of world left over after creation, isolated and exposed to every element. No one knows where they came from. Not even they understand why they are still standing and why they never break down. I tell her I’ve seen rocks like those in the middle of the ocean.

Compromise, Commitment, Cohabitation

Samsa leaves for Iceland and asks Boulder to join her, she says yes. Samsa makes decisions and Boulder adapts to them. She observes the island, the islanders, the things she doesn’t like, she finds work that gives her an escape. She observes the different way they love each other, the pull of the boats when she walks the dock alone at night.

There’s a restlessness. She starts her own business, a food truck, no boss, no employees, a small but significant and necessary freedom. Something of her own. A coping mechanism.

It’s Not An Elephant in the Room

Then it happens. Samsa wants to have a baby, Boulder knows that refusing her will mean the end, so asks for more time.

The novel charts this turning point in the relationship, where one woman will become pregnant and give birth while the other tries to support and be part of something she does not feel.

It is an alternative navigation of an age old dilemma, seen through the lens of a queer relationship, a couple struggling with avoidance issues.

It’s not difficult to imagine where it is headed, or what might happen, when one person isn’t quite committed to the idea and desires freedom so strongly. Is the love of another enough sufficient when events propel their lives forward faster than the communication of important feelings around them?

Boulder’s observations and experience are like that of an outsider who can’t quite enter the familiar, of trying to overcome an obstacle of the mind, when the heart is resisting, when self destructive tendencies threaten to communicate what the voice has been unwilling or unable to.

Boulder was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023.

Further Reading

Read an Extract from ‘Boulder’

Eva Baltasar International Booker Prize interview: ‘I wrote three versions of Boulder and deleted two’

“My protagonists are mirror images of myself, only more precise and always veiled. I try to discover who they are by writing, travelling to their darkest, most uncomfortable corners, which is like travelling to the darkest corners of myself, corners that are often repressed and at times denied wholesale. Being able to embark on this journey aboard a novel is as exciting as it is unsettling. It’s as if the novel had transformed into a caravel and the seas were vast but finite, teeming with monsters on the edge of the earth.” Eva Baltasar