If there is an author who always reminds me of my love for reading, that is Milena Busquets. I have read all her books and she never disappoints, which is why, as soon as she released her new title, Elegant Women, I rushed to get it. And, once again, it did not disappoint me. This new book not only confirms that Busquets has one of the most recognizable voices in contemporary literature, but it also does again what she does so well: finding stories and reflections in situations that any of us would experience without giving them too much significance.
In this instance Milena does not write a novel. Elegant Women brings together the short texts that the writer had been publishing for years on her blog, and read one after another, they end up constructing a kind of fragmented diary in which it is easy to recognize many of the author’s obsessions. They are brief stories, reflections and scenes that speak of friendship, love, family, books, fashion, travel, the passage of time, or the small things that happen on any Tuesday and that, normally, we forget after five minutes.
A book that invites you to live
In the prologue there is a sentence that sums up very well the spirit of the book: “it is difficult to talk about fashion without talking about beauty, and to talk about beauty without talking about love, and to talk about love without talking about the whole world.” Because for Milena Busquets fashion never speaks only of clothes. Just as men never speak only of love or books only of literature. Everything ends up connecting to something much broader.
What interests me most about Milena Busquets is that she always starts from the concrete. A meal, a phone call, a vacation, or a memory serve as a starting point to discuss much more universal issues. She never forces reflection; it simply appears while you read, almost without realizing it. There is a very discreet intelligence in that way of writing. You never get the sense that she wants to prove anything. The literary references, the humor, and the observations about the people around her appear with the same naturalness with which they would arise in a conversation.
And there is also a fair amount of irony. Even when she tackles more serious topics, she always finds a way to soften the drama with an unexpected observation or a comment that changes the tone of the text. That makes reading her very pleasant. Not because everything is light, but because she never becomes transcendental. In fact, one of the things I like most about this book is that it manages to be intelligent without being solemn and funny without falling into frivolity.
There is another thing that runs through the whole book and that I have especially liked: the sense that Milena Busquets writes from an almost contagious enthusiasm. She talks about books, fashion, travel, friends or men with the same intensity, as if everything deserved to be lived and told.
The perfect book for this summer
The new Milena Busquets book is the recommendation I plan to give to all my friends this summer. Being composed of brief texts, it adapts very well to the summer pace. You can read a chapter straight through or return to it a few hours later without losing the thread. In fact, I think this is one of its greatest virtues. It does not invite you to rush to discover what happens next, but to stop on a sentence, close the book for a moment, and pick it up again whenever you feel like it. There are few books that accept pauses so well.
That is why I find it such an apt read for this time of year. Summer also consists of slowing down, reclaiming long conversations, the after-dinner chats, and the time to observe things that during the rest of the year go unnoticed. And that is exactly what Milena Busquets does in Elegant Women. She starts by talking about a dress, an ex, a film, or a meal among friends and, when you close the book, you have the sense that, in fact, she has been talking to you about life all the time.
