Mammoth

In the pulsing latest from Baltasar (Boulder), a Barcelona lesbian attempts to forge a new life in the Catalan countryside. The unnamed narrator, 24, is disillusioned by her sociology research job at a university (“Reducing life to an Excel spreadsheet felt like a crime”), and hopes to sate her feeling of emptiness by getting pregnant (“It wasn’t the desire to have a baby that took me hostage so much as the desire to gestate, to have life course through my body”). After a one-night stand fails to leave her pregnant, the narrator quits her job and cycles through a series of service gigs, then flees the city before becoming too accustomed to poor-paying and soulless work. She settles in an isolated farmhouse in the hills, where she’s invigorated by the harsh winter and caring for the farm’s animals, and she embarks on a friendship with a nearby shepherd. She stays for a year, having sex with the shepherd for money, until a sudden discovery disrupts her newfound peace. Baltasar’s unsettling and poignant descriptions offer a slim yet profound meditation on finding what it takes for one to feel alive. This is striking. (Aug.)