X Is Where I Am
Will be published approx. on 3. March 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-1-917260-20-6 (ISBN)
Description
A searching, buoyant novel about queer love, mothers and daughters, and making a life in the face of the only constant: loss.
Every story is a love story. In a Barcelona redolent with Almodovar vibes, the love is between women: overlapping and messy attachments between friends, young lovers, mothers and daughters. As Sara's mother dies, her daughter is in bed with a new obsession. She's wracked with guilt, but the persistence of need, the demands of the body, refuse to take a dignified pause for the observance of another body leaving this world. If one of the projects of growing up is being defeated by the limits of control we have over ourselves and others, the frustration of trying and failing to be understood, then Sara's loss, her lovers, and her longterm girlfriend are her passage from 28 and casting about to a little bit older and a little bit more sorted out. If love is "a quagmire than anything else-sometimes sombre, sometimes blinded by light." X Is Where I Am is one young woman's fractious, hopeful, attempt to give in to it.
Every story is a love story. In a Barcelona redolent with Almodovar vibes, the love is between women: overlapping and messy attachments between friends, young lovers, mothers and daughters. As Sara's mother dies, her daughter is in bed with a new obsession. She's wracked with guilt, but the persistence of need, the demands of the body, refuse to take a dignified pause for the observance of another body leaving this world. If one of the projects of growing up is being defeated by the limits of control we have over ourselves and others, the frustration of trying and failing to be understood, then Sara's loss, her lovers, and her longterm girlfriend are her passage from 28 and casting about to a little bit older and a little bit more sorted out. If love is "a quagmire than anything else-sometimes sombre, sometimes blinded by light." X Is Where I Am is one young woman's fractious, hopeful, attempt to give in to it.
Reviews / Votes
"Reading Sara Torres is always an experience whose echo, laden with ramifications, reverberates for an indefinite time in the back room of our psyche." -Vogue"Beautiful, lyrical and moving. [...] A call to overturn everything, as intense as it is brief, that does not seek to please anyone." -Elle
"A novel in the style of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, of Djuna Barnes's Nightwood. That is, a narrative text forged from the magma of poetic prose. [...] A fine novel" -The Objective
"I see Sara Torres as a reincarnation of all those philosophers, storytellers and poets who shook the foundations of literature with their theories on love, friendship and human relationships. In her narrative there is candour, in her lyricism there is forcefulness and in her ideas, there is a whole display of erudition." -Luna Miguel
"A luminous book. It weaves together, in a precious and unique narrative, everything that crosses and hurts us." -Maria Sanchez , author of LAND OF WOMEN
"Everything she touches, what she writes, what she observes, turns to beauty. Her gaze is traversed by poetic cadence to the point of impregnating each of her steps with this soothing, restorative rhythm [...] [So It Goes] reaches heights of melodic virtuosity." -Abril
"One of the most beautiful debuts I remember in a long time. [...] About the body, about the need for touch, about that flesh that gives us sex and cancer. [...] It has captivated us and stirred us up a lot." -El Ojo Critico
"A young poet who has revolutionized the world of prose." -El Mundo
"A punch where it hurts the most. [...] A novel with a powerful style and a marked confessional tone, So it goes is all talent, delicacy, a certain provocation, and an author with a great future. A splendid debut." -El Cultural
************
Praise for Sara Torres
Winner of the Javier Morote Award for Best Newcomer.
One of El Cultural 's top ten debuts of the year.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Not illustrated
Dimensions
Height: 194 mm
Width: 125 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
242 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-917260-20-6 (9781917260206)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
Sara Torres is a poet and novelist born in Gijon in 1991. Her novel Lo Que Hay (X Is Where I Am)__ received the Javier Morote Award for best new author in 2022. She studied Spanish Language and Literature at the University of Oviedo before completing a master's degree at King's College London specializing in theories of textuality, psychoanalysis, queer studies, and feminism, followed by a PhD at Queen Mary University of London. Her first book of poems, La Otra Genealogia , won the Gloria Fuertes national poetry award. She has also published the poetry collections Conjuros y Cantos , Phantasmagoria , El Ritual Del Bano and most recently Deseo De Perro . She writes regularly for eldiario.es . Her second novel La Seduccion was published in April 2024. This is her first book to appear in English.
Maureen Shaughnessy is a writer and translator from Spanish. Her published translations include works by Belen Lopez Peiro, Sara Gallardo, Hebe Uhart, and Nurit Kasztelan. Her translations have been featured in The Paris Review, Brick , World Literature Today, LALT, AGNI, WWB and Asymptote . In 2023, her translation of Lopez Peiro's Why Did You Come Back Every Summer received an English PEN Translates Award. Raised in Oregon, she now lives in Bariloche, Argentina.
Maureen Shaughnessy is a writer and translator from Spanish. Her published translations include works by Belen Lopez Peiro, Sara Gallardo, Hebe Uhart, and Nurit Kasztelan. Her translations have been featured in The Paris Review, Brick , World Literature Today, LALT, AGNI, WWB and Asymptote . In 2023, her translation of Lopez Peiro's Why Did You Come Back Every Summer received an English PEN Translates Award. Raised in Oregon, she now lives in Bariloche, Argentina.